Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody, S244 No. 9 in E flat major 'Pesther Carneval'

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'.

Emil Gilels played a sonata by Scarlatti at his first public concert in 1929 and included them in his tours to the West in the 1950s. These recordings present a splendid group of the composer’s widely contrasting moods. Gilels was a true virtuoso in the Lisztian tradition, combining musical integrity with rarely equalled technique. The Fantasia was one of the works with which he won the First Soviet All-Union Competition in 1933, while his recordings of the Hungarian Rhapsodies and three works by Chopin are full of character and personality. A recently discovered notebook in which Gilels logged some of his recording sessions has made the dating of these recordings more accurate in this edition.

Ward Marston, audio restoration engineer

Liszt - The Final Frontier Phew! We've made it! It's all over! This final volume (2 discs) of all 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies brings to an end Leslie Howard's marathon traversal of Liszt's complete music for solo piano on 95 CDs. The series has taken almost 14 years to record. There are 1377 tracks altogether, with a total duration of over 117 hours - that is nearly five days' continuous playing time. Leslie has played over 12 miles of music from 16,000 pages which we estimate totals something between 9 and 10 million notes! (The retail price per note works out at something like 0.0000013p.)

Giovanni Bellucci is the perfect interpreter of Liszt. His musical accolades are endless, his Paraphases on operas by Verdi and Bellini was ranked by Diapason as one of the ten best Liszt recordings in history. This latest release of the complete Hungarian Rhapsodies also has the added benefit of including the rarely recorded Rumanian Rhapsody.

This set of pieces is barely known in extenso, perhaps not least due to the prodigious technical demands made upon the performer, but Misha Dichter himself is convinced that we gain a much deeper understanding of Liszt, keyboard genius, if we move beyond the familiar barn-storming of the Second and immerse ourselves in particular in the far-reaching harmonic implications of the last four. These were composed in 1882 and 1885, a full 30 years after the first 15 Rhapsodies were published in 1853, and naturally they show what a sea-change Liszt’s music had undergone in the period since he had been the toast of Europe, rivalled only by Paganini as a virtuoso performer and showman who routinely inspired fainting fits and the throwing of apparel that was not confined to gloves.

By the 1880s he was the Abbé Liszt, a visionary ensconced in Weimar and worshipped and emulated by Wagner. There are, however, connecting threads between the earlier and later Rhapsodies; most obviously, an unbuttoned delight taken in what he believed to be genuine folk-tunes (many of which have subsequently turned out to be middle-class confections) and in his transformation of them beyond the tropes of keyboard improvisation to infuse the Rhapsodies with the spirit and even form of the verbunkos, the Hungarian dance with its diverse sections and untrammelled zest.

The unique, newly commissioned booklet notes are written by Misha Dichter himself, who offers a guide to the style required for the interpretation of these works as well as a personal memoir of the pleasure he took in recording them.

Carnival, celebrated predominantly though by no means exclusively in Catholic countries, is the period of revelry – and excess – preceding the forty days of abstention during Lent, commemorating the privations of Jesus in the wilderness. The origin of the word is not clear, but it may come from the Latin carne vale, farewell to meat (theoretically forbidden in Lent), and the tradition goes back at least as far as the middle ages in Italy. Masked balls have figured importantly in the festivities, during which often “anything goes” and which reach a climax on the day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, famously known as Mardi Gras (fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday in Britain). Many works of art – visual, literary and musical – have been inspired by the possibilities of the carnival; for the pianist the pinnacle is Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9, which is the focus of this CD. Also included on this disc are works on the same theme – and feature two première recordings This is the second is a trio of discs by Goldstone featuring piano transcriptions themed on forms of public spectacle, following “A Night at the Opera “ (DDA25067); the third “The Piano at the Ballet” is scheduled for release early in 2010.

Described by The New York Times as “a man whose nature was designed with pianos in mind”, Anthony Goldstone is one of Britain’s most respected pianists. He has enjoyed a career encompassing six continents, very many broadcasts and nearly seventy CDs. He has an adventurous approach to repertoire and has been praised by Vienna's Die Presse for “his astonishingly profound spiritual penetration”. In the last few years Goldstone has become known for his acclaimed completions and realisations of works for solo piano and piano duet by Schubert, and for two pianos and solo piano by Mozart, all of which he has recorded on Divine Art CDs. He is also one half of the acclaimed and brilliant piano duo Goldstone and Clemmow with his wife Caroline. The duo has made many CDs for Divine Art and other labels.