Liszt: Unstern: sinistre disastro S208

“There’s intelligent method in this two-disc mega-recital...Disc two ingeniously pairs four works from Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage collections with descriptive pieces by Bartok, Marco Stroppa, Ravel and Messiaen, highlighting poetic, formal, textural and gestural similarities galore. Aimard’s readings are characterised by a clarity that allows detail and shape rightful pre-eminence.” Sunday Times, 16th October 2011

“Bombarded as we are by Liszt recordings in his anniversary year, this is refreshingly different. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is also a skilled maker of programmes...Since large quantities of Liszt in one sitting can be indigestible, this is an excellent way into the B minor sonata and sections of Années de pèlerinage.” The Observer, 16th October 2011

“Aimard has long established himself as the thinking person’s pianist. His Liszt Project juxtaposes a selection of Liszt’s works with compositions by contemporaries and successors who were inspired by him...It’s a strong idea, sustained by the Frenchman’s fastidious pianism, but it comes across more as a lecture-recital than a satisfying listening experience.” Financial Times, 30th October 2011

“Aimard is a supremely intellectual pianist and his intense, rigorously thought-out playing illuminates the two programmes...Aimard's approach is purposefully cool in order to highlight the structural elements of the piece and while there's some exquisite hushed playing, the thunderous climaxes don't build with quite enough abandon.” Classic FM Magazine, February 2012 ****

“This impressive double album is surely one of the most intelligent recorded contributions to the Liszt Bicentenary of 2011...Nothing in Aimard's performances is done for mere effect: throughout, he projects Liszt with a solidity and refinement of invention. A superb achievement.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2012 *****

“In the main, the later the Liszt the more impressive Aimard is...he is ideally persuasive that no composer stayed younger in his desire to make something new...Aimard's reading of the B minor Sonata is distinguished - intellectually satisfying, as it should be, as the most intelligent and far-reaching of all post-Beethoven sonatas on a large scale.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2011

“Howard's performances are quite marvellous: scrupulously prepared and enlightened by this performer's high degree of spontaneity. Hyperion's recording captures every nuance” CD Review

“This, at last, is the comprehensive collection of late Liszt for which we've waited” Fanfare

“Ullen flits with ease between the worlds of the two composers. He brings poetry to both, plenty of flourishes and, for the tottering behemoth towards the end of Cantéyodjayâ, a suitable swagger. If there is the smallest caveat, it is that a little more space could be given to events...Nonetheless, this is a beautifully provocative recital.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2012 ****

“this disc, which wears its concept lightly, offers much thought-provoking pianism. It also alerts us to a conjunction that argues for consonance and lineage in ways that are never pursued beyond the bounds of good musical or historical taste. Beautifully recorded, as ever, from BIS.” MusicWeb International, 24th May 2013

“Arnaldo Cohen is as poetically and imaginatively intrepid as he's technically coruscating, and all these performances offer refinement and ferocity in equal proportion. Few pianists could identify or engage so closely with music that hovers on the edge of silence or extinction (Nuages gris, La lugubre gondola Nos-1 and 2), or that sparks and sports with a truly devilish intent (Danse macabre, Totentanz and so on). In the Danse macabre the music emerges from Cohen's fingers supercharged with malevolence. On the other hand he can send the F sharp Impromptu spiralling into a true sense of its ecstasy, or momentarily inflect Nuages gris in a manner that accentuates rather than detracts from its abstraction and economy. He makes something frighteningly bleak out of Unstern (or 'Evil Star'), with its savagely dissonant climax and its unresolved hymnal solace, yet is no less at home in Réminiscencesdes Huguenots, dismissing ambuscades of treacherous skips, octaves and every other technical terror with a telling mix of verve and nonchalance.
These, then, are performances of rare lucidity, virtuoso voltage and trenchancy, and all quite excellently recorded.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“It's a phenomenal disc.” BBC Music Magazine, 1997

“This memorable disc forms a moving and retrospective tribute to Sergio Fiorentino... and suggests throughout a timeless veracity and compliance between creator and re-creator, between composer and pianist. [The] refurbishment has done wonders for the sound and the performances are of the rarest inwardness and delicacy” International Piano