Franz Liszt - A Critical Discography

[San Antone]

There's also France Clidat's 14 disc box of all final versions of Liszt's non-transcription solo works (or so it is claimed).  It is not worth the money.  She also recorded all the works for piano and orchestra.

Other pianists who have recorded a big chunk of Liszt include Jerome Rose (a Liszt specialist), Aldo Ciccolini, and Idil Biret.

I knew there must have been others I left out, which is why I posted over here.  Thanks for the information.  I kind of knew about Jerome Rose, Aldo Ciccolini, and Idil Biret but didn't include them, I guess, because I didn't think their recordings had ever been issued in one box.  Have they?  I think Biret has something like an "edition" (although it is not very well thought of from what I've read) but I still thought they were individual issues.

I will look for them and update the blog article.

[Todd]

Have they?

I don't think so, but Rose and Ciccolini recorded a lot in in the LP era, so there may old boxes out there.

[San Antone]

I don't think so, but Rose and Ciccolini recorded a lot in in the LP era, so there may old boxes out there.

I did find a 5-CD box of Ciccolini, which is primarily his Annees plus a bunch of the one movement miscellaneous works.  Biret has a 10-CD box called "The 200th Anniversary Collection", but before I buy that I will need to determine if it is worth it or not.  Rose's Vox boxes seem to be unavailable, or at least harder to find.  Looks like he's got a couple of 2-CD and 3-CD things.  I haven't Looked for the Clidet box yet, but if it's very expensive, chances are I won't go for it, at least not yet

[Todd]

I haven't Looked for the Clidet box yet, but if it's very expensive, chances are I won't go for it, at least not yet

It's around $60.  I'm not sure if it's worth $6.

[San Antone]

It's around $60.  I'm not sure if it's worth $6.

That bad, huh.

[Todd]

That bad, huh.

At best, she is OK.  Sometimes I am reminded of some criticisms of Simon Barere, whose harshest critics described him as sounding like a really fast typist playing the piano.

[San Antone]

At best, she is OK.  Sometimes I am reminded of some criticisms of Simon Barere, whose harshest critics described him as sounding like a really fast typist playing the piano.

Judging from her bio on Allmusic (some awards there), you'd think she was better than "OK" - not that I doubt you, just sayin' ...

French pianist France Clidat studied with Lazare Levy at the Paris Conservatory, receiving first prize in piano in 1950. In 1956, she was a prize winner at the Liszt Competition in Budapest, an event that launched her career as a concert artist renowned for her interpretations of the piano compositions of Liszt and Satie. She was awarded a Grand Prix du Disque for her recording of Liszt's complete works for the piano. Other recording projects have included explorations of works by Satie, Rachmaninov, and Grieg. She was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1976 and a Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite in 1987. Clidat taught at the École Normale de Musique in Paris and published articles about the performance of Liszt's solo piano music.

I might have to hear for myself.

[San Antone]

There's a ton of Jerome Rose and Idil Biret on Spotify.  Rose's Annees is really good, which I'd heard before, but he's also recorded the complete Transcendental Etudes - also very good from the little I sampled.   Biret has recorded most, if not all of the major works - I was happy to see that she's done all of the Beethoven transcriptions, looking forward to those.

Lots to listen to in the next week.

[Todd]

There are people who like Clidat, there is no doubt.  I'm not one of her fans.

[Karl Henning]

Todd, what's your two- or three-paragraph summary viz. the monumental Leslie Howard traversal?

[Todd]

Todd, what's your two- or three-paragraph summary viz. the monumental Leslie Howard traversal?

I used to own only a handful of discs from the set.  I sold them years ago when I started listening to Bolet and Ovchinnikov and Darre and Berman, among others.  Now, with the additional great players I've heard, I'm not particularly keen on trying more of his Liszt.  From memory, Howard is very earnest and never or at least very rarely flashy, which is both praise and criticism.  Again, from memory, he lacked the command of Berman or Ovchinnikov, say, and the tone and grand feel of Bolet, and the sound for the discs I had didn't flatter Howard's playing.  Liszt specialists are hit and miss for me with Liszt's piano music.  Bolet - good.  Cziffra - good but variable and sometimes too much the virtuoso.  Howard and Clidat and Rose - not so good.  I'll be trying again with quasi-specialist Maurizio Baglini soon enough, though he has recorded little of his Liszt repertoire.

[Karl Henning]

Thanks.

[San Antone]

I used to own only a handful of discs from the set.  I sold them years ago when I started listening to Bolet and Ovchinnikov and Darre and Berman, among others.  Now, with the additional great players I've heard, I'm not particularly keen on trying more of his Liszt.  From memory, Howard is very earnest and never or at least very rarely flashy, which is both praise and criticism.  Again, from memory, he lacked the command of Berman or Ovchinnikov, say, and the tone and grand feel of Bolet, and the sound for the discs I had didn't flatter Howard's playing.  Liszt specialists are hit and miss for me with Liszt's piano music.  Bolet - good.  Cziffra - good but variable and sometimes too much the virtuoso.  Howard and Clidat and Rose - not so good.  I'll be trying again with quasi-specialist Maurizio Baglini soon enough, though he has recorded little of his Liszt repertoire.

Of course all this is subjective and personal taste but I think higher of Leslie Howard's playing.  In some cases, the waltzes for instance, I find his playing near perfect.  He also must be complimented for his programming. I just posted in the "Recordings being considered" about being pretty close to ordering the big box. 

I too am skeptical of one pianist playing al that music.  But, I place him in the top quartile of Liszt interpreters, and the fact that he has left no stone unturned means that his is the only recording for large segments of Liszt.  While the B Minor Sonata has been recorded over 200 times, similarly for the Hungarian Rhapsodies, Etudes and Annees, large chunks of Listz's catalog have never been recorded until Howard.

I have almost convinced myself to go for it.

[San Antone]

The Mangos sisters, Georgia and Louise, have done a wonderful thing: record all of the four hand transcriptions of the symphonic poems.  They are emphatic, these are confident high-strung performances deploying vivid rhythmic command, high dynamic contrast, and quick tempos. Yet, the the details keep the music from sounding cluttered and the pianists' ability put across what sounds like true conversation keeps the music from sounding frenetic.

[kishnevi]

The Mangos sisters, Georgia and Louise, have done a wonderful thing: record all of the four hand transcriptions of the symphonic poems.  They are emphatic, these are confident high-strung performances deploying vivid rhythmic command, high dynamic contrast, and quick tempos. Yet, the the details keep the music from sounding cluttered and the pianists' ability put across what sounds like true conversation keeps the music from sounding frenetic.

Who transcribed the music?  Liszt or someone else?

[San Antone]

Who transcribed the music?  Liszt or someone else?

The four hands transcriptions are by Liszt, others have done solo piano and eight hands transcriptions of some of the symphonic works, like Les Preludes, but those are rarely recorded.

[San Antone]

Sviatislav Richter did not enjoy making studio recordings and he ended the practice in 1979.  One huge casualty from this decision is that we do not have an authorized recording of Richter playing the Liszt Piano Sonata in B Minor made under the controlled environment of the studio. What are left with are taped performances from live concerts. On the website that has a Richter discography, there are four live performances by Richter of the sonata listed, released on several recordings:

Carnegie Hall, New York, 1965
o   Private Recording P-101 (LP) [ labelled Carnegie Hall, New York, 18 May 1965 ]
o   Melodiya M10 47287 (LP, 1986)
o   Philips 422137 (CD) [ labelled Budapest, 1960 ]
Moscow, 12 October 1965 on Brilliant Classics 92229/3 (CD)
Aldeburgh, 21 June 1966
o   Discocorp RR 454 (LP) [ labelled Budapest, 11 Feb 1958 ]
o   AS Disc 342 (CD) or 345 (CD) or Historical Performers HP 26 (CD)
o   Bianco e Nero BN 2433/2 (CD)
o   Classica d'Oro CDO 3007 (CD 2001)
o   Legend LGD 145 (CD)
o   Music & Arts CD-600 (CD)
o   Music & Arts CD-760 (CD) [ labelled Florence, 1971 ]
o   Memories HR 4218 (CD)
o   Nuova Era 013.6340 (CD)
o   Seven Seas / King Records KICC 2267 (CD)
Livorno, 21 Nov 1966 on Philips 438620 (CD) or 446200 (CD) or 454545 (CD)

Since we are dealing with taped live concerts, they feature mistakes and compromised sound.  Of the four live recordings I think most people agree that the Carnegie Hall (1965) is the best, although you will find advocates for each of them. 

It is my opinion that too much of the time Liszt is played in a manner that underserves certain aspects of his personality.  I think because of the 20th century's aversion to the excesses of the Romantic tradition, especially as exemplified by Paganini and Liszt, pianists have tended to try to tame Liszt.  I feel this is a mistake.  It is the demonic, the excessive, the tempestuous, the crazy aspect, if you will, of Liszt, placed next to his mysterious, poetic side, the mystical/religious aspects that I think is necessary in order to fully present the music.  We need this contrast because otherwise, Liszt is simply not Liszt.

Never let it be said that Richter fails in this regard.

If Arrau or Jolet play Liszt with restraint, Richter is a monster.  Listening to the B Minor Sonata at times I almost expect either the piano or Richter to explode.  It is simply that powerful.  But then, "Richter also finds a mystery and an ever-varying shading, which keeps the listener entranced, wondering what more can happen. Constantly changing tempos surge forward at one moment and draw back the next. One feels Richter abandoning all caution, and a few missed notes intrude, but there is no denying the breath-taking results. The poetic sections of the music are given equally compelling attention." (James H. North, Fanfare, Nov/Dec 2004)

However, I cannot say that his recordings are the best we have for this sonata.  That honor, in my opinion, goes to Martha Argerich.  Too much is lost in Richter's recordings to the imperfect sound and imperfect playing.

Nonetheless, his recordings are stupendous and need to be heard by anyone who calls themselves a fan of this music.

[San Antone]

The celebrated Slovenian pianist [Dubravka] Tomsic enjoys "something of a cult status among pianophiles" (Gramophone Magazine), with performances that convey "heroic power and Olympian vision" (Los Angeles Times) as well as "splendor, drama, passion, poetry, and subtlety" (Boston Globe). The only protégé of legendary pianist Artur Rubinstein, who considered her "a perfect and marvelous pianist," she gave her first public recital at age five and later embarked on an international career that took her to five continents, performing more than forty-five hundred concerts to date. (offical bio)

She recorded a Liszt recital in 2000 that includes a very good performance of the Piano Sonata in B Minor.  Adrian Corleonis, Fanfare's redoubtable Lisztian was not very impressed, "[t]here's a genuine command at work here. But to my ears, she makes Liszt's grandeur protest too much with the overkill result that more is less."  However, in fairness he does cite other views: the Boston Herald's critic rated her performance of the Sonata "probably the best I've ever experienced live in the concert hall," while the Philadelphia Inquirer's person called her "a keyboard giant" and esteemed her performance of the Sonata "a benchmark." Finally, the Boston Globe's report resonates with the ring of truth—"A great concert leaves you with some glimpse of why you're alive. That's the experience Dubravka Tomsic brought to Symphony Hall. . . . Her playing [of the Sonata] was emotional, searching, sublime, and profoundly moving." (Fanfare, May/June 2003).

I listened to it this morning and thought it in the top half of the recordings released this century.  She handled the architectural aspect extremely well, the work seemed to develop and flow seamlessly (which is not easy in a work this episodic).  However, there was something missing, the ephemeral "insane" aspect I look for in Liszt interpretations.

Perfectly respectable recording.

[San Antone]

Lev Vlassenko
Melodiya - MELCD1001088

The great Georgian pianist, Lev Vlassenko, was born in 1928. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire in 1956 as laureate of the First Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, being runner up to the legendary Van Cliburn. He is thought of today as one of the greatest exponents of the music of Liszt.  "Lev Vlassenko is a great artist. Listeners enjoyed his excellent performance of Liszt's Sonata in b minor, a piece which is extremely complicated because of its profound ideas and virtuosity. A magnificent sense of form and style of different pieces such as the Liszt Sonata and the Shostakovich Prelude and Fugue in d minor..." – Sviatoslav Richter

That is high praise from someone who knows something about the Liszt B Minor Sonata, and it is not an exaggeration.  Vlassenko plays the sonata with technical command, incorporating all the expressive elements I want to hear.  It is definitely one of the top fifty performances, which in the case of this work means that it is better than 75% of the rest.  His catlike playing of the fugue is especially a nice moment and he rises to the occasion for the last ten minutes of the work. 

This last section is what separates the truly masters of this work from the others.  Sometimes when a pianist arrives at the fugue he is physically and emotionally spent and the last section is played in a manner that conveys a sense of just trying to get through it.  Masters, such as Argerich, Richter, Hamelin and others not only reach this section without any of sense of being spent, but somehow have conserved their best energy for the end of the work (which is a huge achievement considering the demands of the first two-thirds of the music). 

The fugue opens up the final statement of the themes and a summing up of the entire work, and there are two or three climax moments which simply have to land in order for the performance to be a unqualified success.

My main complaint concerning Vlassenko is that the big moments are not quite big enough.  But overall Vlassenko has left us a very good interpretation.

[Karl Henning]

More etymological trivia . . . no surprise, since much of the population of the former USSR was moved around, and rather often involuntarily . . . Vlassenko is a Ukrainian name, not Georgian.