Liszt: La Lugubre Gondola I, S200 No. 1 (Die Trauergondel)

Misha Dacic's concerts at the Miami Piano Festival in recent years made a sensational impact (check him out on Youtube). They show that appearances do not deceive: he looks like and actually is a wizard: a true artist, with limitless technique and the ability to conjure up myriad tonal effects from the piano, to turn that “miserable instrument” (Beethoven) into an orchestra of the most amazing timbres and sonorities.

Dacic’s affinity with Liszt shows in the selection of pieces on this new CD, presenting facets of the multi-faced genius, centred around three masterpieces, the epic B-A-C-H Variations, the seldom heard “Grosses Konzertsolo” and the infernal Dante Sonata, in which Dacic incorporates elements from all three versions Liszt made - prepare for some surprises!). As a suitable conclusion to an adventurous and tumultuous artistic life he ends with the late piece 'La Lugubre Gondola'.

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.

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.

The exceptionally talented players of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble present a programme of music by Franz Liszt. The arrangements have been made for wind instruments with added violin, cello, double bass and percussion. The arrangements of late piano works, all commissioned by the NBE, have been made by Dutch composers Geert van Keulen, Peter-Jan Wagemans and Elmer Schonberger and Russian born Dmitri Smirnov.

Pianist Silke Avenhaus has generated some fantastic reviews from her various international performances, including those at the Wigmore Hall in London. This is a stunning performance from her of music by Wagner, Liszt and Rossini on the C-Avi label. One to watch.

Liszt’s Sonata in B minor rightly occupies a place of importance in the history of the 19th-century sonata. Armenian pianist Vardan Manikonian performs this masterpiece alongside a selection of other well-known piano works; Liebestraum No. 3, probably the best-known of Liszt’s piano works, La Lugubre Gondola, Première valses oubliée, a playful piece, characterised by dry, virtuosic writing, and Funérailles, one of the best pieces among the Harmonies poétiques et religeuses collection.