Liszt: Transcendental Study, S139 No. 4 'Mazeppa'

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.

The title of this CD refers to the melting pot of lights and colours used by the composers featured here; Scarlatti, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Ravel and Albéniz. Felix Ardanaz’s solo work embraces all styles, although he feels a particular predilection for the Impressionist repertoire, and the works of Albéniz and Chopin.

Simone Pedroni has chosen works of very different character for this collection, but all are variations or a metamorphosis of a single theme. Simone is one of the most brilliant Italian pianists and has performed throughout the world, including a recital and masterclass in Beijing. He has performed as a soloist in Rome with Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting.

Lise de la Salle’s sixth recording for Naïve comes a year after the release of her highly-praised disc of Chopin. Once again it is dedicated to a composer with an anniversary being celebrated - Franz Liszt, who was born 200 years ago. The CD includes original works such as his Ballade No. 2 and Funérailles, as well as some of Liszt’s numerous arrangements of music by other composers including Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Wagner.

Lise de la Salle was born in 1988 and began studying the piano at the age of four. She gave her first concert at nine, and made her concerto debut in a live broadcast on Radio France at the age of 13. Since 2001 she has pursued an international career that has taken her to such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Hollywood Bowl, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Met Museum in New York, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. At the age of 14, her first recording (V4936) featured the music of Ravel and Rachmaninoff and marked the start of her collaboration with Naïve. In 2004 she released an album of music by Bach and Liszt (V5006) which was ‘CD of the Month’ in Gramophone. This was followed in 2007 by a CD of the First Concertos of Shostakovich, Liszt, and Prokofiev (V5053) with Lawrence Foster and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, which won the same distinction in Gramophone. In 2008 came a double album of Mozart and Prokofiev which was a BBC Music Magazine ‘Choice’, as well as an ‘Editor’s Choice’ in the Gramophone. The year 2010 saw the release of a critically-acclaimed recording of the Piano Concerto No 2 (accompanied by the Dresden Staatskapelle under Fabio Luisi) and the Four Ballades of Chopin (V5215).

De la Salle’s new recording presents a selection of Franz Liszt’s compositions for solo piano that is both eclectic and fairly representative. Large-scale works like the Ballade No 2 in B minor, Funérailles, and Après une lecture du Dante, and shorter pieces such as Nuages gris mix with arrangements of the music of others, including Isolde’s Liebestod by Wagner and Ständchen by Franz Schubert.

Patrick Scheyder takes a fresh look at the tradition of Liszt interpretations to reveal the long lost link between instrument and its specific technique. This recording, played on a Pleyel built in 1846, aims to turn this CD into a manifesto, as was the case with the poem Mazeppa, published by Victor Hugo in 1828.The last track is an improvisation, a personal and musical conclusion to the programme. The disc is illustrated by Horace Vernet's, Mazeppa and the wolves (1826).