Franz Liszt - A Critical Discography

[San Antone]

Hah!     Before I began the sonata comparisons, I was comparing Annees in a much less formal manner.  There are huge patches of Liszt I have not heard.

[San Antone]

Igor Ardasev (1992)
Supraphon 11 1519-2
This recital, taped live from a concert in 1991, has Igor Ardasev playing one of the fastest Liszt sonatas available.  Ardasev has ample technique for the work and there is a wonderful vibrancy to his performance.  But there are many very good recordings that simply disappear without making much of a splash.  Unfortunately, this is one of them.

[San Antone]

https://www.youtube.com/v/dwPViUY5g7w

Roberto Cappello
Italia ITL 70006 (LP) (1975)
Roberto Cappello has recently released (6/2015) a wonderful recording of Liszt paraphrases and other works which is widely available, but his recording of the sonata has never been transferred from LP to CD.  This is unfortunate since he has shown himself to be an estimable Liszt interpreter.  His technical fluency is highlighted by the close miked engineering, but the recording retains a warm acoustic, and his performance displays a natural affinity for Liszt's style.

[San Antone]

Janina Fialkowska
RCA FRL 1 0142 (1973)
A specialist of the Classic and Romantic repertoires, Janina Fialkowska has garnered especially high praise for her interpretations of the works of Chopin and Liszt. For the past 30 years, she has also championed the music of contemporary Polish composers including Lutoslawski, Panufnik and Mozetich.

Fialkowska possesses the whole bag of tricks, technically speaking—every hurdle in this vast and treacherous obstacle course is met crisply, authoritatively, brilliantly, precipitately, and often with great tonal finesse. Yet she seldom vaults into that transcendental realm where technique dissolves in poetry. (Fanfare)

I found her playing to be very good; pristine passagework, power when necessary and, contrary to the Fanfare reviewer, I heard the poetry as well.

[San Antone]

I am winding up my survey of as many of the recordings of the B Minor Sonata as I could find.  Over the course of the last month or so I have listened to 138 recordings - with about a dozen more to go.  But I doubt that any of these that remain will effect the Top Ten List.

Krystian Zimerman
Martha Argerich
Sviatislav Richter
Cécile Ousset
Nikolai Demidenko
Marc-André Hamelin
Vladimir Horowitz
Jorge Bolet
Louis Lortie
Maurizio Pollini

I will publish reviews of these ten on my blog as well as offer the entire 54-page discography as a downloadable PDF file by Sunday or early next week.  Separately I will write a "Performance Synopsis" which will include examples from the score and possibly some audio clips to demonstrate certain aspects of the kind of performance I think works best.

Change of plans.  I discovered a French site that did much of the work of assembling all the recordings, over 250 of them.  So even though many of these have not been reviewed, I was able to find recordings of almost all of them through a combination of YouTube and streaming services.  There's about 80 that I want to listen to and write some kind of short review, and make my discography as complete as possible.

So I will push off publishing it for a week or ten days.  Again, I doubt I'll hear any recording to change the top positions, but you never know.  I have already heard some really good ones that I did not expect.

For example Carlo Grante, whose performance is captured in three Youtube clips.  Here is the conclusion of the work:

https://www.youtube.com/v/4SMKkZbRcYQ

Carlo Grante
Esperia P004 (1997)
Carlo Grante has already been gathering superlatives from critics for a while. Firmly in the bracket of the super-pianist (think the likes of Hamelin), for the present recital he intelligently links some of Liszt's most taxing works and some of his most lyrical with art and literature. Grante's own booklet notes are an absolute model of their kind, and he justifies the art and literature theme more than persuasively.  (Fanfare)

An excellent account, just a little under the very best performances.

[kishnevi]

Krystian Zimerman
DG 431 780-2 (1991 CD)
2005 DG collection

There have only a handful of  recordings in the last 20 years that have risen to the standard of the great performances of the past.  Martha Argerich (1971), Sviatoslav Richter (1965), and Vladimir Horowitz (1932) have reigned supreme in this work for decades.  But with Kyrstian Zimerman's account of the sonata from 1991 we arrive at a performance that can truly stand should to shoulder with the above mentioned greats.

A couple of quotes from the critics:

From the descending octaves of the sonata's opening one senses the impress of a powerful personality which, as the epic horizon looms, assumes Liszt's utterance as its own. What at first seems perhaps mannered takes on bar by bar the color of unique authority and by some indefinable, irresistible compulsion—one is spellbound. Zimerman is a phenomenon. He commands a sonorous spectrum embracing angry growls and aquarelle-tinted delicacy, ringing plangency and airy showers of scintillae, easily projected with stunning clarity. Fanfare, Adrian Corleonis, Sept/Oct 1992.

It is to be expected that an artist who has made one of the outstanding recordings of the Liszt concertos (DG, 11/88) should also give us one of the finest ever B minor Sonatas. Whether you think it is the finest ever may depend on your priorities (and on whether you think it is sensible to venture such opinions). What can surely be said is that Zimerman brings to bear a combination of ardour, forcefulness, drive and sheer technical grasp which are tremendously exciting and for which I can think of no direct rival.  Gramophone 10/1991

There is not much to add to those comments other than to point out that DG issued this recording coupled with his equally excellent recordings of the concertos in 2005.  That set would be the way to go, if you wish to hear some of the best modern performances of the great Liszt works for piano.

Red Alert!  Red Alert!
This double CD is on sale at Arkivmusic this weekend (meaning through Sunday midnight, August 2) for $5.99

[San Antone]

Red Alert!  Red Alert!
This double CD is on sale at Arkivmusic this weekend (meaning through Sunday midnight, August 2) for $5.99

A fantastic recording - this is a no-brainer for anyone who wishes to have a great recording of the sonata and the concertos.  Great deal, thanks for the alert.

[bob_cart]

Haven't had the time to list through all the 14 pages of the topic, but if it has not been mentioned already, I rather enjoyed André Laplante's recording of Liszt's works. Haven't had the pleasure to actually own the recording, or listen to everything on it, but judging by this one, though I have not listened to Liszt as much as I wanted to, nor do I have skill in judging good or bad piano playing, I'd say he's pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/v/KJbg9V2KnD8

I love the Mephisto Waltz so much, it's pure love on sheet music, but maybe that's just me.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liszt-Piano-Works-Andre-Laplante/dp/B000009CWJ/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438504027&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=andre+leplante+mephisto

Sadly I didn't find any review of it worth mentioning.

[San Antone]

Haven't had the time to list through all the 14 pages of the topic, but if it has not been mentioned already, I rather enjoyed André Laplante's recording of Liszt's works. Haven't had the pleasure to actually own the recording, or listen to everything on it, but judging by this one, though I have not listened to Liszt as much as I wanted to, nor do I have skill in judging good or bad piano playing, I'd say he's pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/v/KJbg9V2KnD8

I love the Mephisto Waltz so much, it's pure love on sheet music, but maybe that's just me.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liszt-Piano-Works-Andre-Laplante/dp/B000009CWJ/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438504027&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=andre+leplante+mephisto

Sadly I didn't find any review of it worth mentioning.

Her's my entry on Laplante's recording of the B Minor sonata from the same dsic that has the Mephisto Waltz.  He is a very good Liszt interpreter and I look forward to investigating more of his recordings.



André Laplante (1995)
ANALEKTA FLEUR DE LYS FL 2 3030
Laplante's solid technique and stolid muscularity stand surety for these somewhat dilatory, pedestrian performances. Pedestrian is a step beyond toilsome, but Laplante exhibits neither sufficient élan to carry us away, nor the compelling grasp of detail which might bid us stay. En Rêve and Nuages gris are peculiarly wan, though this owes as much to the recessed recording in which they're nearly lost in large hall ambience. In the upshot, closely informed liner notes by Liszt's magisterial biographer, Alan Walker, are the best part of this production.  (Fanfare)

I am more impressed with this recording than the reviewer for Fanfare.  The magisterial beginning fits the work, and the gradual build up to the Grandioso theme grows out of it in a tempered and effective manner.  LaPlante is helped in all this by the sumptuous sound of the Analekta recording - one of the best sounding recordings of this work I've heard.  LaPlante's is an expansive reading, lasting almost 33 minutes, but given his approach, there is no sense of dragging, possibly just a bit of lingering too long during the Andante sostenuto and Quasi Adagio.  But I'd rather hear a pianist linger than rush through some of the more poetic passages. 

[San Antone]

Edith Farnadi
Westminster WL 5266 (1953)
Edith Farnadi (b. Sept. 25, 1921 - d. Dec. 12 or 14, 1973) was a Hungarian pianist. She was born in Budapest and began her studies at the age of 7 at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. She studied with Professor Arnold Székely (also a teacher of Louis Kentner). At the age of 9, she made her musical debut as a child prodigy. At the age of 12, she played the C Major Concerto of Beethoven, directing the orchestra from the piano. She received her diploma from the Musical Academy in Budapest when she was 17 years old. During her studies at the Music Academy she won the Franz Liszt Prize twice. She became a professor at the Budapest Franz Liszt Academy where she remained until 1942. She then concertized widely throughout Europe in the 1950s and made recordings with the Westminster Label. In ensemble she performed with the Barylli Quartet.  It was while still a student in Budapest that she became a steady musical partner with the great Hungarian violinist Jenö Hubay. At the International Musical afternoons at the Budapest Palais, she performed many times with Bronislaw Huberman.

About her recording of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, "in her gutsy, heartfelt, sometimes refreshingly hokey way, Farnadi—alternately thrashing and coaxing the music—captures its earthy spirit and swooning lyricism with a welcome abandon and lack of condescension."  (Fanfare)

As one would expect from a pianist who specializes in Liszt, Edith Farnadi has recorded a very good performance of the sonata: noble and intense when called for and expressively sensitive in the poetic sections.  Sound for this 1953 recording is surprisingly good.

[San Antone]

https://www.youtube.com/v/fKG7dVYyujo

Lukas Geniusas
Concert Saint Petersbourg, February 2011, concert recording
Born in Moscow in 1990, Lukas Geniušas started piano studies at the age of 5 at the preparatory department of F. Chopin Music College in Moscow, going on to graduate with top honours in 2008.  He was born into a family of musicians which played a major role in Lukas' swift musical development. His grandmother, Vera Gornostaeva, the prominent teacher and professor at the Moscow Conservatory, became his first mentor. This culminated in Lukas winning the Silver medal at the Chopin International Piano Competition in 2010 and, in 2012; Lukas was nominated and became the recipient of the German Piano Award in Frankfurt am Main.   (Artist website)

Lukas Geniusas channels his considerable technique towards musical ends and plays with such assurance and precision that this concert recording of the Liszt sonata is catapulted into the top tier performances.  He is a pianist to watch, especially in the Romantic literature for piano.

[San Antone]

Chu Fang Huang
Van Cliburn Foundation (2005)
The Chinese pianist Chu-Fang Huang took first prize in 2005 in the Cleveland International Piano Competition and was a finalist in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. One year later she won first prize in the 2006 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. Her worldwide appearances have included recitals at the Morgan Library and Zankel Hall in New York, the Mustafa Kemal Centre in Istanbul, and the Louvre Museum in Paris, and concerto performances at Lincoln Center and in Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Colorado, and California  in the United States, with the Victoria Symphony in Canada, the Sydney Symphony in Australia, and the Chenzhen and Liaoning Philharmonics in China. She has performed chamber music at the Young Concert Artists Festival in Tokyo and with Charles Wadsworth and Friends in the United States. Chu-Fang Huang studied at the Shenyang Conservatory and made her United States début in the La Jolla Music Society's Prodigy Series. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music under Claude Frank, she received her Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School under Robert McDonald. (Naxos Classical)

It is no wonder she was a finalist at the 2005 Cliburn competition based in part on this performance of the Liszt sonata: it is a very well done; plenty of spirit and character.  She lives up to this description from a 2007 New York Times review of her performance of the Schumann Fantasy in C (Op. 17), "Chu-Fang Huang has done well on the piano competition circuit, and it's easy to see why. At Zankel Hall on Monday evening, she demonstrated a steely technique and a huge, powerful sound of the sort usually associated with burly Russian players, although Ms. Huang is fairly petite and was trained in China and the United States. The only teachers listed in her program biography, Claude Frank and Robert McDonald, are gentler, more subtle players than she is." 

Since 2007, I see that she's recorded Scarlatti sonatas for Naxos and a disc of Chopin, Ravel and Haydn.  She deserves to be heard more.

[San Antone]

Olga Koszlova
AVI Music 8553012 (2008)
On 9 April 2011 Olga Kozlova was awarded the Second Prize and the Press Prize of the 9th International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht, The Netherlands.  Having started to play the piano at the age of five, Olga Kozlova (Russia, 1986) was admitted as a pupil at the Moscow Gnessin Special School of Music in 1994. 10 years later she went on to study at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where she completed her studies cum laude.  During last years she continues her studies in Europe. Her teachers are Natalia Zdobnova, Vera Gornostaeva (Russia), Karl-Heinz Kämmerling (Germany), Bernard Ringeissen (France) and she was one of the last students of Rian de Waal (the Netherlands).  (Artist website)

The programming of Olga Koszlova's 2008 debut recording is somewhat unusual: coupling the piano sonata with an orchestral version.  I, for one, would have preferred a different choice.  However, her playing of the sonata is good enough to still make this a desirable recording.  The first thing I noticed about Olga Koszlova's performance of the Liszt sonata was the clarity of her playing: the octaves were sparkling and perfectly articulated.  Koszlava has no obvious technical deficiencies and the only problems, if any, would involve solving the musical questions.  But after listening through the grandioso and cantando sections, it would appear that Ms. Koszlova is on her way to handling the musical issues well.  What remains, of course, are the quasi adagio, which poses the most serious musical problems, and the technically difficult sections after the fugue.  But, I must report that she played these difficult sections fantastically.  Her recording must be among the best in the last ten years.  Since 2005, hers is only bettered by Hamelin (in my opinion), and if her performance in 2011 only earned a silver medal, I would like to know who won the gold (I looked it up, it was Masataka Goto, Japan).

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Somebody in Japan is cultivating a wonderful Liszt tradition. First there was Nemoto's standout second year of Années de pèlerinage and now we have Ms. Kuwahara's first year.

The first year of Années is designed to paint the most delicate portrait of the Swiss countryside. None of which escapes Kuwahara. She's right in tune with each and every pastoral-esk sensation. Whether it's an aroma, a sound, a mood, or a puff of wind, all is perfectly transmitted at the keyboard. Her playing is all poetry yet it coarsens up at the appropriate points, as if to point out that no countryside is without its rugged stretches.

Simply an outstanding interpretation in every way.   

Amazon link is here with a proper pic below:

[Dancing Divertimentian]

So, the Hungarian Rhapsodies. Primo Liszt. What are everyone's favorite recordings?

[kishnevi]

So, the Hungarian Rhapsodies. Primo Liszt. What are everyone's favorite recordings?

Jando.

[San Antone]

So, the Hungarian Rhapsodies. Primo Liszt. What are everyone's favorite recordings?

Since I've been completely absorbed with the sonata, I haven't listened to the HR much - but liked Pizarro, and have heard good things about Jando.  It's a toss up which will be the the next stage of the discography. I've thought of the HR or the Transcendental Etudes, with the TE having a slight edge.  I am curious how many pianists have recorded all of the HR?

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Jando.

Thanks! Onto the sample list.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Since I've been completely absorbed with the sonata, I haven't listened to the HR much - but liked Pizarro, and have heard good things about Jando.

Sounds interesting!

It's a toss up which will be the the next stage of the discography. I've thought of the HR or the Transcendental Etudes, with the TE having a slight edge.

Loads of good stuff in each set. Good luck with the choice.

I am curious how many pianists have recorded all of the HR?

Good question. My only complete is set Cziffra's first stereo set from 1957-58 and it's a definite barn-burner. My interest in another set is mainly for something in more up-to-date sonics. Not that the Cziffra is sonically bad - it's quite good, actually. So might be a worthwhile venture, might not.




[asin]B000024ZHH[/asin]

[San Antone]

I checked my notes and two more names appear: Roberto Szidon and Misha Dichter.  Both have received good reviews but Szidon's might be the set to try first.