Liszt: O du, mein holder Abendstern - Rezitativ und Romanze aus Tannhäuser S444

A new album from Melba Recordings offers Wagner “unplugged”: favourite concert selections from the operas arranged by Franz Liszt for the piano. Asher Fisch is one of the most noted Wagnerian conductors today and he brings a symphonic sensibility and lyricism to these concert showpieces. His poetic readings of Liszt’s Wagner Paraphrases have been developed through an acclaimed career in the opera houses of Europe. These are deeply satisfying performances shot through with heartfelt musical insights, Fisch’s first piano solo recording.

Liszt’s paraphrases are more than mere transcriptions, they give heart and soul and expressive voice to the mighty originals, heightened by his own inimitable virtuosity. The selections recorded here include paraphrases on music from The Mastersingers of Nuremburg, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin, plus of course, the famous ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan and Isolde.

In these performances, Asher Fisch displays a depth of scholarship and understanding of historical context, uncovering hints of the changing and often highly charged relationship between the two great composers; Liszt’s hinting at the origin of the Tristan Chord or later disrespectfully thumbing his nose at Wagner with the addition of a virtuoso octave scale.

Fisch knows where all the bodies are buried in these scores, and just how to bring out the detail at its most vivid and vital.

Although not widely regarded as a composer of major works for piano, Wagner’s three exquisite miniatures that conclude this album show that, away from the opera house, he could craft music on a smaller scale that is both intimate and personal.

Liszt, the virtuoso, played all the keyboard literature and travelled the roads and seas; Liszt, the thinker, nourished his intellect through his readings of Lamennais, Lamartine and Hugo, Shakespeare and Byron, Dante and Petrarch, Goethe and Schiller; Liszt, the composer of songs, indebted to Italian bel canto, the French romance and the German chorale, set texts written in six languages, not including Latin. Hesitating between pure creation and transcription, which called upon his gifts as a wizard of the keyboard throughout his lifetime, he thus paid tribute to every facet of Western art, as may be seen from this recital, or "soliloquy", to use his own expression.

Tristan Pfaff, born 1985, studies with Michel Beroff and has been doing the rounds of the International Piano Competitions, winning the Arcachon. He came third in the recent Scottish International [Oxana Shevchenko was the winner].

An original contribution to the Verdi and Wagner celebrations of 2013: the complete Verdi and Wagner transcriptions by Liszt!

In a time when there was no recorded sound it was customary to promote the works of a composer by playing transcriptions for solo piano of well known works or excerpts. Super virtuoso Franz Liszt was a champion in this genre, his transcriptions are an art form in themselves, his complex and highly virtuosic piano writing enhanced rather than diminished the impact of the original work.

These recordings offer the complete transcriptions of two of Liszt’s heroes: Verdi and Wagner, featuring the famous Rigoletto paraphrase, the Duetto from Aida, the Spinnnerlied from Der Fliegende Holländer, the notorious Tannhäuser Overture (one of the most difficult pieces ever written) and the moving Isoldes Liebestod.

Played with authority and conviction by Michele Campanella, one of Italy’s foremost Liszt specialists, on a 1892 Steinway piano, lending a sense of authenticity to the performance.