Liszt: Sonetti di Petrarca (3) for voice & piano, S270 (Three Petrarch Sonnets)

With a Negro spiritual, spectacular bel canto, romantic song and comic opera, Lawrence Brownlee unveils the breadth of his repertoire and the lyric tenor voice that has won acclaim at the New York's Metropolitan Opera (for his 'agility, elegance and Rossinian style) and farther afield.

One of the most sought-after bel canto tenors on the international scene.

Includes songs by Duparc, Donizetti, Liszt (3 Petrach Sonnets), Rossini, Ginastera and American contemporary composer Ben Moore.

The start of another Hyperion Lieder series is always cause for celebration. In advance of his bicentenary in 2011, we turn to a composer whose songs, against the vast bulk of his compositions in larger genres, were considered insignificant for well over a century.

A collaborator with some of Europe’s best singers, such as the great French tenor Adolphe Nourrit and the husband–wife duo of Feodor and Rosa von Milde (the first Elsa and Telramund in Wagner’s Lohengrin), Liszt used song as a compositional laboratory in which to experiment with ‘Zukunftsmusik’, or ‘music of the future’, including some of his most finely wrought works. A cosmopolitan artist who traveled prodigiously during his years as a virtuoso performer from 1838 to 1847, he chose song texts written both by denizens of Mount Olympus (Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Hugo, Tennyson, Tolstoy, Petrarch) and amateurs, the latter often aristocrats from Liszt’s glittering social circles. From their words he created songs that changed the very definition of the genre, that are a bridge to such later masters as Hugo Wolf, Sergei Rachmaninov and Richard Strauss.

This first volume in the series features the American tenor Matthew Polenzani who has been astounding Met opera audiences in recent years with his expressive and ardent performances. He is accompanied by the curator of the series and Hyperion regular, Julius Drake.

The intention of the Liszt Lied Edition is to give these songs their due place in the repertoire of Liszt and to make previously unpublished works available, as well as to present recording premiers. Liszt’s Lieder contain the essence of his entire oeuvre. Adrian Eröd made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 2001 and in 2003 at the Teatro Fenice in Venice. He has performed with Harnoncourt, Rilling and Rattle.

Legendary tenor José Carreras performed the evening of music recorded here at the Vienna State Opera in September 1988 as a musical “thank you” to all the Austrians who had supported him in his fight over the previous year against the potentially lethal condition of leukaemia. The pianist is at this very special concert was Vincenzo Scalera, and the repertoire encompasses Fauré, Massenet, Turina, Liszt, Puccini, Tosti and more.

Jose Carreras was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1987, and was only given a 10% chance of survival. However, as a result of an iron will, a positive outlook and good fortune, he gradually regained his health, and went on to produce the best selling series of “Three Tenors” recordings alongside Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. During 1988 he appeared in a series of comeback concerts including this one that took place on 16 September in Vienna.

Liszt’s songs are among his least performed works. With the bicentenary of his birth upon us, much of his output will be performed and recorded, and no doubt re-assessed. The composer himself was aware that he was difficult to categorise, and that the public face he had was as a flashy virtuoso pianist composer – a reputation that survives to this day, as the Rick Wakeman’s 1975s rock-opera ‘Lisztomania’ (filmed by Ken Russell, and starring The Who’s Roger Daltry as Liszt) testifies.

‘Everyone is against me: the Catholics because they find my music profane, the protestants because my music is Catholic, the Masons because they find my music too clerical. For the conservatives I am a revolutionary, for the futurists I am a phony Jacobin. For the Italians, in spite of Sgambati (his pupil and fellow composer), if they are Garibaldini they hate me because the think me a bigot, if they are on the Vatican’s side, they accuse me of turning the Tempio di Venere into a church. For Bayreuth I am an advertising agent rather than a composer. The Germans hate my music because they think it French, the French hate it because they think it German. For the Austrians I make Gypsy music, for the Hungarians I make foreign music. And the Jews hate me and my music without any reason.’

Interesting words, from a deeply frustrated Liszt. So how do we or should we find a definition for his music? The songs provide a fascinating clue. The writing for voice is clearly of Latin origin, skillfully woven into German Lied. Liszt manages to adapt the ‘feel’ of the music depending on the language he was setting – so a French text and the music ‘sounds’ of French origin and so on. Such stylistic flexibility can also be found in his orchestral, choral and solo piano works making this great composer a difficult customer in an age where we like to ‘pigeon-hole things. The songs require great skill from both singer and accompanist to reveal their many treasures.