Liszt: Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este (Années de pèlerinage III, S. 163 No. 4)

Praised by the Los Angeles Times for his grace, eloquence and the ‘understated beauty of his tone’, Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski shot to fame after winning the London International Piano Competition in 2001. A regular concerto soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras, he also enjoys a busy international career as a chamber musician, and his solo recordings have received recognition as ‘Editor’s Choice’ and ‘Debut Album’ awards from Gramophone.

With repertoire rich in nods towards a folk hinterland, Trpceski’s programme for this Wigmore Hall Live CD draws strongly on his deep immersion in national traditions of music and dance throughout his childhood. Schubert’s tuneful 16 German Dances pave the way to what is arguably the composer’s most virtuosic sonata, his ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy. Almost symphonic in scale, Trpceski’s emphatically energetic performance here unleashes an emotional outpouring.

By way of a transcription of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV543, in which the rich sonorities of the organ work are handsomely explored in an arrangement for piano, the second half of the programme focuses on Liszt. Here, Trpceski demonstrates his wide palette of tone colours with subtly sculpted phrases to explore the depths of these masterpieces.

The great Russian virtuoso Nikolai Lugansky presents his recording to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) – an album of popular piano pieces including La Campanella, Valse oubliée, his version of Isolde’s Liebestod by Wagner, some of the Douze études d’exécution transcendante, and several gems from Années de pèlerinage, among them Vallée d’Obermann, Sposalizio, Les jeux d’eau de la Villa d’Este and Sonnet de Pétrarque 123.

An acclaimed recording artist, Nikolai Lugansky has recently signed an exclusive contract with the Naïve-Ambroisie label. The Moscow-born pianist put together this disc, his first devoted entirely to Liszt’s music, with a seriousness, freedom and concern for overall unity worthy of the composer himself. His last release - an all-Chopin recital for Onyx - was described by The Guardian as “unquestionably thrilling”, and his recording with violinist Repin of Sonatas by Franck, Grieg and Janáček (Deutsche Grammophon, October 2010) was hailed by Gramophone as “a quite magnificent performance”. It also won the Prize for best Chamber Music recording at the BBC Music Magazine Awards 2011. Nikolai Lugansky won the Diapason d’Or for his recordings of the complete Chopin Études and Preludes, and the Rachmaninov Preludes and Moments musicaux, as well as an Echo Klassik Deutscher Musikpreis for his 2005 recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 3. Capable of great refinement and sensitivity in Mozart and Schumann, and breathtaking virtuosity in Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, Lugansky is a pianist of extraordinary depth and versatility. Recent and upcoming engagements include concerto projects with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Andris Nelsons, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and NHK Symphony Orchestra all with Charles Dutoit; recitals at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Moscow State Conservatory, London’s Wigmore Hall, Prague’s Rudolfinum and the Wiener Konzerthaus; and chamber music collaborations with Vadim Repin and Leonidas Kavakos.

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.

An incomparably gifted pianist, Liszt was a stunning virtuoso, the creator of the solo recital and the father of modern piano technique, as well as being an intensely spiritual artist and a noble composer. “Liszt is not a pianist, he is a poet, whether he plays his own music or that of others,” Théophile Gautier wrote. The influence of the man who Lamartine called “the king of the piano” on the development of piano music was immense, and his piano music amounted to a passionate overture pointing the way to the future of the art.

Liszt considered virtuosity of the kind that makes such a powerful impression in his “Campanella” study (based on one of Paganini’s Caprices for solo violin) or the Mephisto Waltz to be a vital ingredient of the music and not an end in itself. A great admirer of Wagner’s harmonic language, he produced a number of transcriptions of the music of Wagner, which he realised with great brilliance.

Liszt took minor orders in 1863, and several of his works – such as Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, the third piece in the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (a title borrowed from Lamartine) – can be seen as central to his spiritual quest. He could also be lyrical, as in the celebrated Nocturne, which has become better known under the title Liebestraum, and melancholy or intimate, as in the Consolations, which he dedicated to Victor Hugo. As for the Jeux d’eau a la Villa d’Este (from the Années de pèlerinage), the extraordinary impressionism of this piece look forward to Ravel’s Jeux d’eau.

The artist writes “I feel the French word ”Voyageurs” best covers, in a single word, the many facets of the traveler…….. Making these various aspects of traveling in the broadest sense of the word, audible is the goal of my selection of these works.” Recorded live at the Vienna Musikverein.

Luiza Borac’s debut recording on Avie, of the Three Piano Suites by George Enescu (AV 0012/AV 0013), caused a sensation and garnered her unanimous critical acclaim, securing this young Romanian pianist’s place on the musical map. For her follow up recording, Luiza, who has won over two dozen international competitions including the Concours Grieg in Oslo, turns her attention to two pillars of the romantic era, Schubert and Liszt. The composers’ seemingly contrasting temperaments are linked on this CD by a common itinerant theme. Excerpts from Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage are paired with Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy (which Liszt orchestrated). Throughout Luiza applies strength and sensitivity in equal measure, beautifully and vividly brought out by the Hybrid SACD format.