Liszt: Isolde's Liebestod (after Wagner), S447

Alexandra Dariescu makes her debut recording for Champs Hill Records in a recital of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. A hugely popular communicator, Alexandra is a former YCAT

artist, a Laureate of the Verbier Academy and has been awarded the Romanian Ambassador’s prize All three composers on this album contributed to the foundations and development of Romantic piano composition, and this set of works forms one of Alexandra’s most popular piano recital programmes.

Schumann published his Opus 1, Variations on the name Abegg at just 20 years old, playfully translating the last name of the dedicatee - Mademoiselle Pauline Comtesse d’Abegg - into musical pitches [A-Bb-E-G-G] from which his theme begins. Of the three composers here, Liszt became the most idolized pianist-composer of the nineteenth century. His Ballade No. 2 in B minor recalls works by Chopin and Schubert, while his transcription from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, demonstrates his influence by the composers he admired.

Chopin’s Grande Polonaise was originally written for piano and orchestra and was premiered coupled with the opening Andante Spianato: but two years later Chopin re-arranged the work for piano solo, which we hear here. Also featured on the disc is Chopin’s Ballade No. 4, Op. 52, one of his most profound compositions. Chopin wrote this melancholy masterpiece at a time when he was in a state of precarious health.

This season, Alexandra made her Carnegie Hall debut in New York and appears in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing both Rachmaninov and Greig concertos.

Born in Romania, Alexandra subsequently studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, completing further studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where was made a Piano Fellow.

Jimmy Smits introduced American pianist Andrew von Oeyen to millions of PBS viewers at the July 09 event "A Capitol Fourth." In the star-studded program, Andrew joined Michael Feinstein and the National Symphony in a performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue".

In his first solo recording, Andrew presents the depth and breadth of Liszt's piano music - the grand design, the deep poetry, the ever-present song. Liszt's involvement in opera is well represented in this album, with affecting paraphrases of Wagner (Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin) and Verdi (Rigoletto).

Worldwide concert audiences hail Andrew as an exciting soloist with major orchestras, and in top recital and Festival series. "As for star quality, von Oeyen is already risen…. leaves you convinced that he can do absolutely anything he likes with a keyboard." (Chicago Tribune)

"Andrew von Oeyen, keenly attuned to Liszt's grand design…I would go so far as to say that von Oeyen played the finest all-around performance of Franz Liszt's Sonata in B Minor that I have heard in many years." Washington Post

Ben Schoeman is regarded as one of South Africa’s foremost pianists. Having won all the national competitions he put paid to his growing reputation by winning the coveted first prize in the 2009 UNISA

International Piano Competition. Proving it was no fluk, he also won the first prize in the Royal Overseas League Music Competition in London.

In his debut solo-CD, released on the TwoPianists label’s debut imprint, Ben synchronizes his great love for Franz with the bicentenary celebrations of the composer’s birth. A beautiful variety of Liszt works,

from the gorgeous Les jeux d’eaux a la Villa d’Este to the monumental B minor Sonata, coupled with his ‘dazzling virtuosity’ and ‘magical musicmaking’ ensure the stamp of a unique artist on the rise.

Ben Schoeman has a lively interntational performing career. He has played in prestigious concert halls such as the Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Konzerhaus in Berlin, the Gulbenkian

Auditorium in Lisbon and the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest.

He has preformed in solo and chamber music recitals at various international festivals in the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Bulgaria, The Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.

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].

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.

The young pianist Maltempo started to play at the age of 3. His extensive repertoire ranges from classical to modern composers. He is particularly fascinated by the piano transcriptions of Liszt, their spiritual and philosophical elements as well as by the range and depth of his works for piano and orchestra.

A year ago we issued, to great critical acclaim. A double album of Paderewski’s first recordings, made in Europe in 1911-12 (APR6006). Between 1914 and 1931 the pianist recorded for Victor in the US but in 1937, after it appeared Paderewski had retired from the studio, he was persuaded to return to the HMV studios in London to make a final series of recordings. At first the plan was to record the repertoire which featured in the film ‘Moonlight Sonata’, a huge blockbuster success at the time which featured Paderewski playing himself, but in addition to this repertoire Paderewski went on to record works by Haydn and Mozart which were new to his discography. It has often been said that in later life Paderewski’s technique was not what it had been, and to an extent the is undoubtedly true, but this is not an issue in the classical works featured here, and the Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in particular reveal the extreme poetry that had mesmerised audiences for fifty years and had made Paderewski the most famous pianist of his generation.

This is the first time all Paderewski’s 1930’s HMV recordings have been assembled together and two unissued tracks from the 1938 sessions are also included.