Liszt: Nuages gris, S199 (Trube Wolken)

To celebrate 10 years of recording activity with Lise de la Salle, aged only 24 years-old, with 6 discs under her belt, Naive are delighted to offer this 'best of' that collects an impressive series of outstanding performances in diverse repertoire.

The bonus DVD includes a 93' recital recorded in one of Paris' most beautiful concert places: Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. The programme includes works by Schumann, which Lise de la Salle has recording here for the first time. She continues to develop an impressive international concert schedule, in recital and in concerto.

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.

Krystian Zimerman made two Liszt discs for Deutsche Grammophon in 1987 and 1990 respectively: one of the two Piano Concertos and Totentanz, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa, the other of solo piano music, comprising Liszt’s masterwork, the B minor Sonata,and a selection of late piano works – spooky, often unnerving pieces, like Nuages gris and La lugubre gondola II.

Both are generally regarded as benchmark recordings, and have consistently been in the catalogue for over 20 years. On the Concertos disc, The Penguin Guide wrote: “It has poise and classicism and, as one listens, one feels that this music could not be played in any other way”, with Boston and Ozawa offering “excellent support”. Krystian Zimerman, as ever, plays a “superb” instrument (Gramophone) – prepared personally by the artist.

Now, as part of our celebration of the Liszt 200 anniversary, we are offering both as a handy twofer, with new cover art (photo by star Japanese photographer Akira Kinoshita), original liner notes in English, German and French, and additional photos in the booklet. The cover design is by Claudia Zimerman, the pianist’s graphic-designer daughter.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard honours Franz Liszt’s 200th birthday (October 22, 1811) with his most ambitious recording for Deutsche Grammophon to date. In this extensive 2-CD set, Aimard juxtaposes a selection of Liszt’s works with compositions by Liszt’s contemporaries and successors who were inspired by the Hungarian composer. Recorded live in Vienna’s Konzerthaus over two evenings, Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s Liszt project is a pinnacle of the Liszt Year commemorations.

On ‘Sound Waves’, Alexandra Silocea immerses herself in the aqueous sonorities of some of the great pianistic composers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Schubert, Liszt, Debussy and Ravel, plus a world-premiere recording of a work commissioned by young Norwegian composer Martin Romberg.

Alexandra Silocea made something of a splash with her debut recording on AVIE of the first five Piano Sonatas by Prokofiev (AV2183), which “I don't recall having heard being played better by anyone”, according to International Record Review. For her follow up she immerses herself in the aqueous sonorities of some of the great pianistic composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The rippling stream in Schubert’s ‘Der Müller und der Bach’ from the song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin is faithfully reproduced for solo keyboard by Liszt whose own, grander Jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este evokes a fountain in the gardens of a Tivoli villa. In Reflets dans l'eau Debussy subtly interplays watery reflections, both melodic and rhythmic, whilst Ravel, like Liszt, celebrates a fountain, this one in Versailles, in Jeux d'eau. These and other water-inspired works flow through Alexandra’s second recording, ‘Sound Waves’. She adds a distinctive stamp with a commission by the young Norwegian composer, Martin Romberg, Eärendil, meaning “lover of the sea” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s elven language of Quenya.