Liszt: Au bord d'une source (Années de pèlerinage I, S. 160 No. 4)

Melodiya presents an album of Grigory Ginsburg, a wonderful virtuoso pianist and one of the glorious representatives of the Russian piano school of the 20th century.

Ginsburg’s name is now overshadowed by his some of his better known peers such as Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, Yakov Flier, Stanislav Neuhaus and others. Meanwhile, in his time in the 1930s-1950s, his concert performances entranced audiences and critics alike.

This album comprises compositions by Franz Liszt and Anton Rubenstein’s Piano Concerto No. 4. Ginsburg’s interpretation of the concerto became a model for musicians of many generations.

Andreas Haefliger’s provocative and trend-setting Perspectives series – juxtaposing the seminal sonatas of Beethoven within the context of works by other composers – reaches its fifth volume with two titans of the piano literature: the groundbreaking Hammerklavier Sonata, and Book One of the Swiss ‘Years of Pilgrimage’ by Franz Liszt, this year widely celebrated on the bicentenary of his birth.

Haefliger’s critically and commercially successful Perspectives series mirrors his live recitals, and vivid memories linger in audiences who have heard his numerous performances of these works throughout Europe and the USA.

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.

Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, première année—Suisse ('Years of Travel, First Year—Switzerland') stands as one of the most important productions from his Weimar years—the years of his real coming of age as a composer of international stature—and begins, appropriately, with homage to Switzerland's most famous legend: Chapelle de Guillaume Tell ('William Tell's chapel').

Although not explicitly specified as such by Liszt, the Trois Morceaux suisses are in effect a supplement to the Première année (along the lines of the supplement Liszt specifies for the Italian collection). The three works are arrangements of themes by other composers who have endeavoured to capture the atmosphere of the Swiss herdsman's song.