Liszt: Sonetto 123 del Petrarca (Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161 No. 6) (Petrarch Sonnet No. 123)

BIS is proud to present a new disc from star pianist Yevgeny Sudbin who here combines works by Liszt, Ravel and Saint-Saëns under the themes of Love, Delirium and Death.

Funérailles is Liszt’s elegy for his Hungarian countrymen who died in the 1849 uprising against Habsburg Rule. Death also appears in Ravel’s depiction of a hanging – Le Gibet (The Gallows) from Gaspard de la Nuit – and closes the programme in Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre.

Love is present in the Petrarch Sonnets – originally song settings of poems in which Petrarch immortalises, the object of his unrequited passion – and Ravel’s Ondine – the tale of a water nymph tempting a mortal to join her in the depths of the lake.

Delirium is present throughout the disc, especially during the nightmarish portrait of the goblin Scarbo.

Yevgeny Sudbin has received considerable critical acclaim for his recordings on BIS. His disc of music by Scriabin was described in BBC Music Magazine as being ‘as terrifyingly changeable and emotionally all-engulfing as the music itself’.

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.

The great Russian virtuoso Nikolai Lugansky presents his recording to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) – an album of popular piano pieces including La Campanella, Valse oubliée, his version of Isolde’s Liebestod by Wagner, some of the Douze études d’exécution transcendante, and several gems from Années de pèlerinage, among them Vallée d’Obermann, Sposalizio, Les jeux d’eau de la Villa d’Este and Sonnet de Pétrarque 123.

An acclaimed recording artist, Nikolai Lugansky has recently signed an exclusive contract with the Naïve-Ambroisie label. The Moscow-born pianist put together this disc, his first devoted entirely to Liszt’s music, with a seriousness, freedom and concern for overall unity worthy of the composer himself. His last release - an all-Chopin recital for Onyx - was described by The Guardian as “unquestionably thrilling”, and his recording with violinist Repin of Sonatas by Franck, Grieg and Janáček (Deutsche Grammophon, October 2010) was hailed by Gramophone as “a quite magnificent performance”. It also won the Prize for best Chamber Music recording at the BBC Music Magazine Awards 2011. Nikolai Lugansky won the Diapason d’Or for his recordings of the complete Chopin Études and Preludes, and the Rachmaninov Preludes and Moments musicaux, as well as an Echo Klassik Deutscher Musikpreis for his 2005 recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 3. Capable of great refinement and sensitivity in Mozart and Schumann, and breathtaking virtuosity in Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, Lugansky is a pianist of extraordinary depth and versatility. Recent and upcoming engagements include concerto projects with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Andris Nelsons, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and NHK Symphony Orchestra all with Charles Dutoit; recitals at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Moscow State Conservatory, London’s Wigmore Hall, Prague’s Rudolfinum and the Wiener Konzerthaus; and chamber music collaborations with Vadim Repin and Leonidas Kavakos.

Luiza Borac’s debut recording on Avie, of the Three Piano Suites by George Enescu (AV 0012/AV 0013), caused a sensation and garnered her unanimous critical acclaim, securing this young Romanian pianist’s place on the musical map. For her follow up recording, Luiza, who has won over two dozen international competitions including the Concours Grieg in Oslo, turns her attention to two pillars of the romantic era, Schubert and Liszt. The composers’ seemingly contrasting temperaments are linked on this CD by a common itinerant theme. Excerpts from Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage are paired with Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy (which Liszt orchestrated). Throughout Luiza applies strength and sensitivity in equal measure, beautifully and vividly brought out by the Hybrid SACD format.

This, the forty-third volume (and sixty-fifth disc) in Leslie Howard's Liszt encyclopaedia, includes the Second Book of the composer's Années de Pèlerinage, a work which derives its considerable inspiration from the art and literature of Italy. Here we find the final versions of the three Petrarch Sonnets and the famous Dante Sonata.

Alongside these works we have Venezia e Napoli, an ingenious set of encore pieces, and the intriguing coda to Au bord d'une source (from the Swiss volume of the Années) which Liszt penned for the young Italian composer/pianist Giovanni Sgambati in 1863.

Italian pianist Domenico Codispoti performs Liszt’s famous B minor Sonata, his Petrarch Sonnets, and Granados El Amor y la Muerte from Goyescas - a passionately performed romantic programme, making of the disc a musical polaroid of the artist’s own emotional journey through its themes of love and death.

“One of the finest young concert pianists I know. He has superb technical command, exceptionally fine taste in his interpretations, impressive maturity.” These where the words of Gyorgy Sandor after awarding Domenico Codispoti the First Prize at the Pilar Bayona International Piano Competition (member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions) in Zaragoza, Spain, which marked the beginning of his international career. Hailed by critics worldwide as “a fully mature virtuoso in the highest meaning of the word” (Morgunbladid, Reykjavik), “one of the most elegant and musical artists of his generation” (Diario de Jaén), “a skilled storyteller, always imaginative and inventive” (flyinginkpot.com), Italian pianist Domenico Codispoti is also winner of Ferrol International Piano Competition, Premio Jaén (WFIMC), and many international piano contests in his native Italy.