Liszt: Il penseroso (Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161 No. 2) (The Thinker) - download (MP3 & FLAC)

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.

Andre Watts was born in 1946 and made his concert debut when he was only 9 years old. At the age of 16, Leonard Bernstein asked him to perform Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.1. Bernstein became Watts’ mentor. This all-Liszt recital, recorded in 1986, demonstrates what a great musician and breathtaking virtuoso he is.

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.

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 virtuoso pianist and exclusive Chandos artist Louis Lortie here performs all three books, or ‘Years’, of Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), a work rarely recorded in its entirety. Lortie has made more than thirty recordings for Chandos, covering a repertoire from Mozart to Stravinsky. His recording of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Variations won an Edison Award; his disc of works by Schumann and Brahms was judged one of the best CDs of the year by BBC Music, and his interpretations of Liszt’s complete works for piano and orchestra and of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas were both selected as Editor’s Choice in Gramophone.

Liszt was an artist by nature. He seemed to feel and be affected by external influences far more deeply than most, and he was a master at translating these feelings into music. The first Year of the Années de Pèlerinage, a reworking of pieces from his earlier Album d’un Voyageur, was inspired by his travels in Switzerland as a young man. In this work, the music does not depict or describe particular scenes or landscapes, rather it attempts to communicate the feeling that Liszt experienced when he saw them, his ‘strongest sensations and most lively impressions’.

‘Chapelle de Guillaume Tell’, for example, depicts a fourteenth-century Swiss hero through a broad and stately theme that quotes a Swiss Alpine horn melody with trumpet calls, echoes, and tremolos. ‘Au lac de Wallenstadt’ depicts the gently rising and retreating waves of the lake, over which Liszt places a theme of beautiful simplicity.

The second Year was inspired by the art and literature that Liszt encountered on his travels in Italy. ‘Sposalizio’ was inspired by Raphael’s painting The Marriage of the Virgin in the Brera in Milan, and ‘Il Penseroso’ by Michelangelo’s statue on the tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence.

The third and last Year of the Années de Pèlerinage was written much later, when Liszt was in his sixties, and at a time when both the man and the style of his music had undergone a vast change. The pieces show far more simplicity in the treatment of the musical components and often convey a mood of despair and stark austerity.

From the outset, Liszt knew that his Années de Pèlerinage was unlikely to appeal to the masses. In his own words, the work was ‘written for the few rather than the many – not ambitious of success, but of the approval of that minority which conceives art as having other uses than the beguiling of idle hours, and asks more from it than the futile distraction of a passing entertainment’.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Liszt’s birth, this new format title (2 CDs + 50,000 word biography) explores the fascinating world of LIZST: HIS LIFE AND MUSIC.

Perhaps the greatest pianist who has ever lived, Liszt was one of the titanic musical figures of the Romantic age. Abandoning his spectacular career as a travelling virtuoso in his mid-thirties, this passionate lover and fond father dedicated himself instead to a life of composing, conducting, teaching and, increasingly, religious devotion, eventually taking minor orders in the Roman Catholic Church. This biography explores an enthralling life lived for long periods in France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the composer’s native Hungary – a kaleidoscope of cultural worlds whose folk music, literature and landscapes richly coloured Liszt’s own music.

The 2 CDs feature music spanning Liszt’s career, and the free website www.naxosaudiobooks/lisztlifeandmusic offers hours of extra music and other bonus material.

Michael Korstick, an interesting German pianist who attracts attention wherever he goes with his stupendous technique and supreme musicality, now continues his Liszt series with Années de Pèlerinage II.