Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody, S244 No. 11 in A minor

The second album of Vanessa Benelli Mosell, one of the most exciting pianists of the younger generation, contains a selection of works which Liszt regularly performed himself during his piano recitals (the piano recital itself, being a showcase for one artist only, was invented by Liszt). The works share a quality to impress the audience, whether through hair-raising pyrotechnics (Hungarian Rhapsodies, Grand Galop Chromatique), or heartfelt sentiment (Liebestraum). Vanessa’s first album (Brilliant Classics 94209) was met with great enthusiasm from the international press.The Gramophone wrote: “Prodigious playing that combines the blazing virtuosic demand and her natural musical insight…great panache… sparkling technique in demanding music…she leaves no doubt of her enviable facility”. New

recording, newly written liner notes. A second disc from the brilliant young Italian pianist brings a focus on the 19th century lion of piano music whose anniversary was celebrated last year.

The first Brilliant Classics disc from Vanessa Benelli Mosell included music by Prokofiev and Scriabin: a test for even the most engulfing virtuoso. "Sparkling technique in demanding music", "She leaves no doubt of her enviable facility through out this, her ultra-demanding debut album", "Dextrous and cool-headed, she launches into Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata at a cracking pace...she is off like a rocket in the drum-beat 7/8 Precipitato finale, remarkably maintaining her impetus in the ever-widening leaps of the closing pages." Gramophone, November 2011 This new Liszt disc is structured after the fashion of a recital such as the composer himself might have given; with shorter and lighter items sprinkled among unabashed showpieces, and in the centre, an exploration of the composer’s complex relationship with his homeland expressed through native melodies and dances transmuted into new forms through the fantasymedium of the Hungarian Rhaposody. To finish, the fireworks of the Grand galop chromatique, beloved of Cziffra, Bolet and others in whose pianistic footsteps Vanessa Benelli Mosell dances with abandon.

Liszt - The Final Frontier Phew! We've made it! It's all over! This final volume (2 discs) of all 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies brings to an end Leslie Howard's marathon traversal of Liszt's complete music for solo piano on 95 CDs. The series has taken almost 14 years to record. There are 1377 tracks altogether, with a total duration of over 117 hours - that is nearly five days' continuous playing time. Leslie has played over 12 miles of music from 16,000 pages which we estimate totals something between 9 and 10 million notes! (The retail price per note works out at something like 0.0000013p.)

Giovanni Bellucci is the perfect interpreter of Liszt. His musical accolades are endless, his Paraphases on operas by Verdi and Bellini was ranked by Diapason as one of the ten best Liszt recordings in history. This latest release of the complete Hungarian Rhapsodies also has the added benefit of including the rarely recorded Rumanian Rhapsody.

This set of pieces is barely known in extenso, perhaps not least due to the prodigious technical demands made upon the performer, but Misha Dichter himself is convinced that we gain a much deeper understanding of Liszt, keyboard genius, if we move beyond the familiar barn-storming of the Second and immerse ourselves in particular in the far-reaching harmonic implications of the last four. These were composed in 1882 and 1885, a full 30 years after the first 15 Rhapsodies were published in 1853, and naturally they show what a sea-change Liszt’s music had undergone in the period since he had been the toast of Europe, rivalled only by Paganini as a virtuoso performer and showman who routinely inspired fainting fits and the throwing of apparel that was not confined to gloves.

By the 1880s he was the Abbé Liszt, a visionary ensconced in Weimar and worshipped and emulated by Wagner. There are, however, connecting threads between the earlier and later Rhapsodies; most obviously, an unbuttoned delight taken in what he believed to be genuine folk-tunes (many of which have subsequently turned out to be middle-class confections) and in his transformation of them beyond the tropes of keyboard improvisation to infuse the Rhapsodies with the spirit and even form of the verbunkos, the Hungarian dance with its diverse sections and untrammelled zest.

The unique, newly commissioned booklet notes are written by Misha Dichter himself, who offers a guide to the style required for the interpretation of these works as well as a personal memoir of the pleasure he took in recording them.

This fourth volume of late Cortot completes APR’s survey of the post-war recordings which the pianist made for EMI in the UK. We are now entering the era of tape recording, and apart from the Deutsche Ländler of 1951, all the other titles, which date from 1953-54, were recorded in this new medium. This gave the artist new freedom, as he was not restriced to the length of a 78rpm side for each take, and Cortot tackled much of his ‘big’ repertoire again. Sadly, by this time his failing health meant that many works remained unissued as they did not meet the standards of his earlier magnificent versions, however some old warehorses did stand the test of time, as can be heard in the Carnaval featured here. His playing may have become technically more fallible but the performances fully support the claim of the late Thomas Manshardt, one of Cortot's last pupils, that this period of Cortot's career "is his greatest in thought and warmth and mastery’.

The booklet contains a discography of all Cortot’s HMV sessions from 1953 to 1955.

The Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor Alfred Cortot is regarded as one of the greatest 20th century musicians, especially renowned for his poetic insight into the Romantic period piano works and is particularly associated with those of Chopin. A must for enthusiasts of piano music and great performances.