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

“Given that Niu Niu was only 14 when he made this recording last year, his achievement is remarkable. His equable, rounded tone is underpinned by mature technique...Sometimes a big enough response to the music's soaring flight is lacking...Clearly though, here is a fine musical talent.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2013 ***

“in purely digital terms, Niu Niu produces some remarkable playing. He has a wonderful leggiero touch when required: the 'Spinnerlied' from The Flying Dutchman is very fine (how good to hear a youngster revive this old favourite)...Niu Niu is able to breathe fresh life into an old chestnut like the Liebestraum No. 3. So - fantastic fingers, bags of potential but, as yet, no charm.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2013

“Poetic insights? Moments of repose? Those must wait, if they arrive at all, for the prodigy’s mature adulthood...the piano tone is varied and round, never appearing to have been stamped out by a music-making machine. Another good omen could be the modest, almost casual way that Niu Niu often concludes a piece, rarely emphasising the final chord.” The Times, 11th January 2013 ***

“There's no lack of finesse and technical facility about Fisch's performances, but there's something perfunctory, almost approximate. Liszt composed the pieces as recital items, after all, recreating vocal lines and orchestral sonorities in pianistic terms, but Fisch seems determined to play down their element of showmanship.” The Guardian, 18th October 2012 ***

“An interesting programme of seven of Liszt's Wagner paraphrases, and three Albumblätter by Wagner himself, but there's a matter-of-factness to the playing that works against this repertoire.” BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2012 ***

“Lugansky is a fine – if occasionally cool – interpreter of [Liszt's] work, blending lyricism with panache and just the right sense of daring, so that you're often conscious of huge technical challenges braved, then overcome...Just occasionally – in the Liebestod, and in Petrarch Sonnet 123 – you wish he'd let rip a bit more...A flawed disc, though the best of it is an absolute knockout.” The Guardian, 10th November 2011 ****

“Lugansky favours fantasy over whimsy. Liszt's ticklish arrangement of Paganini's "La Campanella" is the only rhinestone twinkler in a handsome programme. Throughout, there is a feeling of extemporisation, most clearly in the "Transcendent Etude in F minor".” The Independent, 4th December 2011

“Lugansky's exceptional command of tremolo figuration really does have Liszt's keyboard figuration shimmering as it should.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2012 ***

“Lugansky's approach is a musicianly, 'contained' and modern reaction to the worst excesses and extravagances of the past. Occasionally cool-headed to the point of detachment, he is clearly intent of celebrating Liszt as above all a great musician rather than a meretricious showman. You will not easily locate a more poetic view of three of the Transcendent Etudes” Gramophone Magazine, February 2012

“Once you have settled to Lugansky's sometimes glossy tone, it is hard not to be seduced by the playing of a natural Lisztian, as alive to textual detail as conveying a work's drama and poetry. Look no further than his bravura handling of Vallee d'Oberman, surely on of the composer's most inspired masterpieces, rising to ecstatic heights in the final pages.” Classic FM Magazine, March 2012 *****

“The positioning of each piece maximises its unique qualities and expression, meanwhile fulfilling an intrinsic role in the overall succession of vivid impressions. Lugansky's immense palette of colour, dynamics and varities of touch are exploited to the fullest. Studiously avoiding and tendency to overplay, he creates instead thoughtful and poetic interpretations and textures that shimmer rather than dazzle.” International Record Review, February 2012

“Outstanding'” CD Review

“The centrepiece is the three Sonetti del Petrarca, fabulous elaborations of Liszt’s own songs, and Williams lends them a suave grandeur. The suite’s Dante sonata finale is sternly, superbly dispatched; the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude a solemn, beautiful contrast; the transcription of Isolde’s Liebestod a calmly ecstatic one.” Sunday Times, 2nd September 2012

“Williams is a superb Liszt interpreter, never content to use even the most technically demanding music as just a vehicle for flashy display, but always looking beneath the elaborate surfaces for deeper rigour and meaning. That doesn't mean he ever understates the music's sense of theatre or misjudges its sense of scale, though; there's a tremendous power and intensity to his Dante Sonata” The Guardian, 6th September 2012

“Liszt’s piano music could have been written for Williams: he has the size of imagination, the temperamental bravura, the virtuosity-with-substance to make it sound elevated, not the stuff of charlatans...It’s a challenging programme to which he rises with immense authority, investing the Sonnets with the Olympian grace they deserve, and the Sonata with a mixture of barnstorming momentum and architectural scale.” Financial Times, 22nd September 2012 ****

“Llyr Williams plays free and easy with the printed page … he does so in the context of performances that reveal such profound understanding, stylistic sophistication and obvious love of the music that I am completely won over.” International Record Review, November 2012

“Williams is entirely on terms with the virtuoso requirements of the Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli...The intricate part-writing of Liszt's transcription from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, too, comes across with a stellar combination of absolute clarity and gorgeous piano sound.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2013 ****

“Instead of heady bravura, with more deliberate tempi Williams deconstructs the music, as it were, shows you every nut and bolt, ensures every note is given its due weight and importance...and then assembles everything into performances of overwhelming power that often send a tingle up the spine. For Williams, less is more...Williams may be no Cziffra but offers another view of Liszt that is as valid as it is compelling.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2013