Liszt: Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa (Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161 No. 3)

Two pupils of the great Julius Katchen are featured in the piano music of Liszt on this 2CD set. Pascal Rogé was eighteen years old when he recorded the Liszt Piano Sonata, Mazeppa, Vallée d’Obermann and the third Liebestraum in London in December, 1969. It was during the 1967 International Competition Georges Enesco that Rogé was first discovered. He was sixteen, the only Frenchman to reach the finals, and he won a prize even though he was the youngest competitor. In Paris, where he was unanimously awarded First Prize for the Piano at the Conservatoire (in Lucette Descaves’s class) when he gave his first recital, Le Figaro wrote: ‘… Here is an exceptional personality and already much more than a hope: a gold mine’. The International Herald Tribune praised him with these words: ‘… his remarkable technical prowess, but also style and ability to draw his audience into his line of focus and hold it there. Such a quality is the sign of a true artist.’ Twelve years later, in 1980, he made another Liszt recording for Decca, this time of the Italian volume of Années de Pèlerinage. Both recordings are issued as part of this 2CD set, completed with Liszt recordings of both flamboyant pieces – the transcendental study Wilde Jagd, the second Legend ‘St. Francis of Paul walking on the waves’ – as well as the intimate, almost experimental late works. Born in Calcutta, India, of Viennese-Jewish parents, raised in considerable poverty, Jean-Rodolphe Kars was much admired in pianistic circles. Although his upbringing had been that of a secular Jew, he converted, in 1976, to Catholicism and was baptised in 1977. Mysteriously, in 1981, he put an end to his career as a pianist, entering the priesthood in 1986. All these recordings appear internationally on Decca CD for the first time.

This, the forty-third volume (and sixty-fifth disc) in Leslie Howard's Liszt encyclopaedia, includes the Second Book of the composer's Années de Pèlerinage, a work which derives its considerable inspiration from the art and literature of Italy. Here we find the final versions of the three Petrarch Sonnets and the famous Dante Sonata.

Alongside these works we have Venezia e Napoli, an ingenious set of encore pieces, and the intriguing coda to Au bord d'une source (from the Swiss volume of the Années) which Liszt penned for the young Italian composer/pianist Giovanni Sgambati in 1863.

A second solo disc on Signum from an insightful Welsh pianist. Llyr Williams is an acclaimed soloist, accompanist and chamber musician; highly sought after as a performer in the United Kingdom he was recently awarded a South Bank Sky Arts Award for his Beethoven Sonata Cycle at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh in August 2011 – where he performed all 32 sonatas in just two weeks! This disc follows SIGCD226 'Pictures', a collection of works by Debussy and Liszt alongside Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition'.

Born in 1978 in Vienna, the pianist and conductor Florian Krumpöck is the music director and principal conductor of the North German Philharmonic Orchestra and the municipal theatre in Rostock. He gave a highly acclaimed solo debut at the Vienna Musikverein in 2008, playing two complete cycles of 32 piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven for the first time.

Enrico Pace has a special affinity to Liszt: First Prize winner of the first International Liszt Competition 1989 in Utrecht he dazzled both jury and audience with playing of immense power of imagination, subtlety and devilry (here his own appearance worked to his advantage..).

This event marked the beginning of an impressive international career, with concerts in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, La Scala Milan, Wigmore Hall London, and Festivals such as Verbier, Roque d’Anthéron and Lucerne. Equally enjoying playing chamber music he has a partnership with the violinists Frank Peter Zimmermann and Leonidas Kavakos. For a long time Enrico Pace preferred the inspiration and excitement of a live concert, to recordings and it is with particular joy and pride that Piano Classics is allowed to issue his first ever CD, containing works near to Pace’s heart, may it touch the hearts of his many admirers and fans!

Recorded in the splendid acoustics of the Auditorium Pedrotti in the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, Italy, where Pace studied in his youth, 29-31 August 2011.

This 2CD set performed by the highly rated Korean pianist Seung-Yeun Huh features all three suites that make up Franz Liszt’s great piano masterpiece Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage).

Born in Seoul, South Korea, acclaimed pianist Seung-Yeun Huh has lived in Europe since the age of sixteen. After winning the Artists’ International Competition in New York, she was a great success when she made her debut at the Carnegie Hall. Since then she has performed with many great orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony and Austro-

Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic and conductors David Zinman and Adam Fischer. She has previously recorded a complete cycle of Mozart’s solo piano pieces for Ars Musici.

Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) (S.160, S.161, S.163) is a set of three suites by Franz Liszt for solo piano. The composer's complete musical style is evident in this masterwork, which ranges from virtuosic fireworks to sincerely moving emotional statements. His musical maturity can be seen evolving through his experience and travel.

The third volume is especially notable as an example of his later style. It was composed well after the first two volumes and displays less showy virtuosity and more harmonic experimentation.

The first installment of Piano Classics Liszt Series - 2011 Bicentenary - presents French pianist Michel Dalberto. These recordings made for Denon in the 1990s show Dalberto's great dramatic and pianistic qualities, in monumental and moving performances of the Bénediction de Dieu dans la Solitude, the Weinen, Klagen Variations, the second book 'Italie' of Années de Pelerinage, and the 3 Liebesträume. Future releases in what will be the Liszt series, will include Claudio Arrau, Earl Wild, Jorge Bolet, Alfred Brendel, György Cziffra, Cyprien Katsaris ….