Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major, S125

After his studies in Moscow with Elisso Virsaladze Boris Berezovsky received international recognition and fame by winning the Gold Medal of the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990. Since then he has made a world career playing with all major orchestras (Berlin, Concertgebouw, New York Philharmonic, London SO) and conductors. His recording of Liszt’s Piano Concertos and Transcendental Studies have become standards of Liszt playing: his limitless technique (indeed, transcendental) is never an end in itself, but permits him to present the structures and inner drama of these magnificent works. Formerly issued on Warner Classics.

This first CD in Katsaris’ Liszt series illustrates five aspects of Liszt, all equally fascinating.

Separated onto two CDS, Disc 1 is themed ‘Gipsy and Romantic’ and Disc 2 ‘Avant-Garde’, ‘Homage a Wagner’ and ‘The Philosopher’.

Claudio Arrau imbued the music of Liszt from his early teens on, when studying in Berlin with the famous Martin Krause, himself a student of Liszt.

Arrau, a serious and deeply intellectual mind, abhorred the empty-headed and sometimes vulgar Liszt playing in fashion in his youth. For him this music is deeply human, able to express everything in men’s heart and psyche. Fidelity to the score is the key to the true interpretation of Liszt. The legendary 'Arrau sound', with its deep and ringing sonority, gave Liszt’s piano music an unheard spectrum of emotions, lifting it to a higher spiritual level.

Arrau made many recordings in his long lifetime. His Liszt recordings, made at an advanced age for Philips in the ‘70s and ‘80s are landmarks of profundity and beauty. In his younger years, however, Arrau was an astonishing virtuoso, displaying a jawdropping technical command. In his concert performances he took more risks than in his studio recordings, which to some sound ponderous and selfconscious, often on the slow side.

Piano Classics is happy to release some rare and historic live performances of Arrau: exciting, red-hot performances of great technical brilliance, and yes: (sometimes dangerously) fast! It contains one of the best live performances of the Sonata ever put to disc.

Cziffra was renowned with critics and audiences for being a popular Liszt interpreter. This CD brings together four important compositions for piano and orchestra recorded live in Rome, Milan and Venice between 1958 and 1960.

Born in Nagoya in Japan, Etsuko Hirose began to play the piano at the age of three and later studied with Bruno Rigutto and Nicholas Angelich. In 1999, her First prize at the Martha Argerich Competition marked the point of departure for her solo career. A previous disc of Chopin Ballades, also for Mirare, was compared favourably to Nelson Goerner and even Horowitz.

Few pieces encapsulate Liszt’s genius as comprehensively as his two piano concertos. They not only showcase his dazzling technical ability, but also his skills as a musical visionary. Both took almost 25 years of painstaking work to complete, during which time he made drastic revisions, enhancing the role of the orchestra and the structural unity, and developing what Robert Schumann called ‘a new and brilliant way to weld the orchestra and piano together’.

Byron Janis’s 1962 Moscow recording of these concertos has assumed legendary status. Janis was a former child prodigy who studied with Vladimir Horowitz during the 1940s, and was considered one of the most brilliant American pianists of his generation before his career was cut short by illness. He was chosen in 1960 to spearhead a new cross-cultural exchange between the USA and USSR, and made such an impact that the American Mercury recording team went over to the USSR to record this collaboration. The recordings were made at the height of Janis’s career, and are probably some of the most accomplished he ever made.

Janis’s own agile technique and unfussy style bring a welcome sparkle and structural lucidity to this music.

During the 1962 sessions Janis also recorded a small selection of solo miniatures by Schumann, Falla and Guion. The previous year he also recorded three pieces by Liszt: the Hungarian Rhapsody No.6, his Valse oubliée No.1 and Sonetto 104 del Petrarca from the Années de pèlerinage: 2ème année, and these are all included here.

These 1945-1955 broadcasts of live collaborations between Claudio Arrau and George Szell are being released for the first time and stem from well preserved and carefully restored broadcast transcription discs. The works include Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1, Chopin Piano Concerto No.2 and Liszt Piano Concerto No.2. All are performed with dynamism, daring and volatility.

On 08 June 2010, the Wiener Philharmoniker treats its namesake city to a free open-air concert on the grounds of the magnificent Schönbrunn Palace

In keeping with the Summer Night Concert’s popular character, Franz Welser-Möst will conduct the Wiener Philharmoniker in a programme of universal, indeed, one might say, cosmic appeal. Its title: “Moon – Planets – Stars”. This theme will be reflected throughout the concert with Josef Strauss’s waltz Sphärenklänge (Music of the Spheres), “Mars” from Holst’s Planets, selections from John Williams’s score to the Hollywood sci-fi classic Star Wars, Otto Nicolai´s “Moon Chorus” from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Joseph Lanner’s waltz Abendsterne (Evening Stars), a fantastic piece here receiving its first recording by the Wiener Philharmoniker. Liszt’s bravura, but also highly poetic, Second Piano Concerto represents the only “down-to-earth” piece in the concert, with Yefim Bronfman the soloist.

Schönbrunn and its manicured Baroque gardens comprise one of the most elegant and beautiful UNESCO world cultural heritage sites. No more fitting backdrop for glorious music is imaginable.

“After the brilliant Liszt interpreter Lazar Berman, now we have another maestro of the piano with a special affinity for Liszt – Idil Biret.” Berliner Zeitung

“Though the concert program accented the virtuosic – and her sheer strength to the end was formidable – Biret proved she could be a poet at the proper opportunities, as in her truly miraculous delivery of the Liszt selection.” New York Daily News

“In performing Liszt’s monumental Sonata, Idil Biret marshalled the sustaining power to see the music to the end, at which point her audience, not surprisingly, rose to its feet. Relatively few pianists have the sense of architecture to organize this symphonic poem.” Toronto Star