THE ROMANTIC PIANO VIRTUOSO / ALYSSA KOK PIANO RECITAL / Review

 

THE ROMANTIC PIANO VIRTUOSO

ALYSSA KOK Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (11 August 2026)

Very often, we as an audience get to experience a young prodigy perform in concert, often wondering what happens to them later in life. Chances they become doctors, lawyers, engineers et cetera, lost to the world of music. On a rare occasion, that prodigy blossoms to become a concert artist fair and true. This was the case with Singaporean pianist Alyssa Kok, whom I last heard in 2014. Twelve years on, she has graduated from the Salzburg Mozarteum University, later pursuing further studies in Poland. It was an absolute pleasure to see her again in concert.

Entitled The Romantic Piano Virtuoso, she waxed lyrical about two pivotal figures of early musical Romanticism, Fryderyk Chopin and Franz Liszt. She spoke most eloquently and engaged the audience on historical backgrounds and lives of both composers. She opened her recital with the Variations on La ci darem la mano (Op.2), the famous duet from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. An early work from 1827, it is impossibly fussy with filigreed ornamentation, where digital brilliance often trumped musical substance.

The solo version also includes orchestral tuttis, and there is a lot going on. An extended introduction soon ushers in the theme, which she plays plainly and without exaggeration, leading to six variations which get more florid as they come. Surmounting all the technical difficulties quite effortlessly, these included treacherous leaps from both hands in opposite directions in Variation 4, which must have given Schumann ideas for his Fantaisie Op.17. There was no loss of momentum all the way through to the final Alla Polacca, in the form of a striding polonaise for a blazing conclusion. Little wonder Schumann had exclaimed, “Hats off gentlemen, a genius!”

Coming from the polar end of Chopin’s output was the mature Sonata No.3 in B minor (Op.58) from 1844. By this time, Alyssa had sufficiently warmed up, bringing out quintessential qualities of Chopin’s Romanticism, contrasting fierce Polish nationalism with pure lyricism in the opening movement’s themes. She omitted the exposition repeat, going straight for the jugular in the development and the gambit worked wonders. 

The swift etude-like Scherzo was dispatched with ease before baring the soul in the nocturne-like Largo, the true beating heart of the work. The final Rondo in tarantella rhythm was a return to scintillation, building up to a simply thrilling close. One can already imagine this passionate first half to be one straight out of the later rounds in the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw.

Alyssa then emerged in a fire-engine red gown for a much shorter second half of music by Franz Liszt. She began with the popular Paganini Etude No.3, La Campanella, where the repeated finger leaps and extended trills held no terrors for her. Later, her account of running straight into a fiesta in Spain, wide-eyed and starry recollections, were relived in the blistering Rhapsodie Espagnole. 

A symphonic poem for piano in all but name, the opening La Folia theme was delivered in full glory Technicolor, its massive octaves and chords coalescing into a satisfying whole before the more animated Jota Aragonesa took over. There was some loss of control at this blinding speed, but there was no doubt she was building to something monumental. Generating a big plethoric sonority that completely filled the hall, she brought her recital to a grandstanding close.

Her encore of Chopin’s achingly beautiful Nocturne in E major (Op.62 No.2) showed where her allegiances and empathies lay, in the lap of the long-suffering, consumptive Pole.

KENNETH HAMILTON PLAYS LISZT Volume 1: DEATH & TRANSFIGURATION / Review

KENNETH HAMILTON PLAYS LISZT

VOLUME 1: DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION

Kenneth Hamilton, Piano

Prima Facie 167/168 / 2 CDs

 

The Covid pandemic has kept many an artist depressed and out of work, but Cardiff-based Scottish pianist Kenneth Hamilton has been busy in the recording studio. Recorded between January 2019 and May 2020, his first anthology of Franz Liszt piano works centres on music composed after his retirement from a glittering and glamourous concert career. With Lisztomania out of the way, he focussed on composing, teaching, philosophising and taking minor orders from the Vatican.

 

This is music of the mature and wizened Liszt, who plumbed the depths of the spiritual realm and beyond. Given the heightened risks and uncertainties of the pandemic, there is scarcely a soul who will not ponder on life and death, or where we came from and where we go from here. This recital addresses that existential need, a close and personal look at Liszt’s own thirst for spiritual sustenance and regeneration, his response to bereavement and how he found his peace.  

 

Four pieces from his cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (published 1853) are included, with three in the first disc which opens with Funérailles. This is a familiar enough work memorialising deaths in the Hungarian revolution of 1848 (and possibly Chopin a year later), but the bell tolls four times instead of the usual two in its short lead in. Following this is the sublime Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, one of Liszt’s most genuine spiritual utterances, which receives a magisterial reading not short of attention to the filigree and fine details. Pensée de mort (Thought of the Dead) is not well-known, totally underrated despite sharing thematic similarities and form as the Sonata in B minor. It is essentially a tone poem for piano solo that climaxes in De Profundis, clamavi ad te Domine (From the Depths, I Call Out To You, Lord), despairing cry of the recently departed.  

Franz Liszt the Sage

 

A selection of Liszt’s late pieces, casting him as a visionary pointing to the future, have been sprinkled along the way. Raw dissonances distinguish the menacing Csárdás Macabre,  which is in complete contrast with the bleakness and harmonic ambiguity of Nuages Gris. That the latter leads directly to the great Sonata in B minor is a masterstroke of programming not immediately apparent. Both works are harmonically linked by the key of G minor, which shifts like drifting clouds to a home in B minor. The Sonata is the perfect study of thematic transformation, a sprawling single-movement work of pure genius that gets the performance it deserves. At just under 27 and a half minutes, Hamilton’s performance is one of the swifter ones, comparable with those by Martha Argerich and Leslie Howard, but nowhere does he feel rushed. He just does not linger in the slower contemplative sections.

 

Opening the second disc is the Ballade No.2 (1853), also in B minor, and positively the best reason to hear both discs in quick succession. Thereafter until the last work is a varied collection of short pieces – lyrical and late works – many of which will be unfamiliar to most listeners, with the exception of Schubert’s Impromptu in G flat major in Liszt’s own edition. It is the same music until past the half-way mark when he gilds the melodic line with a treble voice. A most interesting addition it is, complementing the brief Ave Maria (also from the Harmonies cycle), unrelated to the famous Schubert lied, and lovely transcriptions of Liszt’s own songs Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth and  Die Lorelei.

 

Just as lyrical are the late pieces Abschied (1885, written for his Russian student Alexander Siloti), En rêve (1885, written for August Stradal who transcribed his symphonic poems for piano), Romance (1848) and Romance oubliée (1881). The last two works are based on the same music, the latter being a re-writing of the former, thought to be lost or “forgotten”. But notice how his perspective has changed over the years. 

Of the pieces of mourning, Dem andenken Petofis (In Memory of Petofis, published 1877) sounds like a postlude to Funerailles. Prelude to Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (Weeping, Lamentation, Weeping, Despair) of 1859, following the death of son Daniel, was famously recorded by Horowitz just before his death. La Lugubre Gondola I (1886) was written in response to the death of his son-in-law Richard Wagner. There are hardly any sadder or darker works than these in the Liszt catalogue.    

Kenneth Hamilton 
is your personal Liszt scholar.

 

Closing the album is Liszt’s popular transcription of Isoldes Liebestod from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, with the notion of love and death finding its glorious final fruition. A perfectly redemptive end to a journey that began with mortality. Accompanying this odyssey are copious exhaustively well-researched notes by Hamilton himself, where the aid of a magnifying glass becoming paramount. There is not a single vulgar work or superfluous note in these 152 minutes of music. That curious predicament will certainly be fixed in Kenneth Hamilton’s second Liszt album, of transcriptions and arrangements entitled Salon and Stage.

 

GÖTTERFUNKEN: BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO.9 for Two Pianos on Navona Records

GÖTTERFUNKEN

BEETHOVEN Symphony No.9

NINA SMEETS & 

ELIANE RODRIGUES, 2 Pianos

Navona Records NV 6382

 

The title comes from the first line of Friedrich Schiller’s An die Freude (Ode To Joy), which reads Freude, schöne Götterfunken in German or “Joy, beautiful sparks of God” in its English translation. This was the basis of Beethoven’s final symphony, specifically the final choral movement which the world knows and loves as Ode to Joy.

 

This album is a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in an arrangement for two pianos by Brazilian pianist Eliane Rodrigues, based on a two-piano edition by Franz Liszt from 1851. Liszt’s later version for two hands on one piano is better-known (as more recordings exist) but is a superhuman task for the performer, and excellent recordings by Cyprien Katsaris, Konstantin Scherbakov and Idil Biret are proof of that. The version for two pianos allows for more textures and details to be incorporated, especially in the densely-packed finale, besides providing a more efficient (and less taxing) division of labour on four hands. It received its premiere in 1855 at the hands of Clara Schumann and Brahms (Oh, to be a fly on the wall that day!). This new recording by Rodrigues and her daughter Nina Smeets succeeds on most counts.

 

The performance plays for 78 minutes, suggesting spaciousness, width and breadth. As many orchestral recordings clock in under 70 minutes, this one on two pianos appears protracted on initial encounter. The slow movement’s Adagio molto e cantabile does drag a little before picking up speed in the second Andante moderato onwards. It takes the best part of 19 minutes, but not a smidgen of filigreed detail is lost.

 

Elsewhere, there is expectancy and urgency. The opening movement is gripping, and the upping of tempo for the Scherzo increases the excitement. All this better prepares the ears for the Adagio. What of the Ode to Joy finale? When one does not miss the voices, the performance would have succeeded. Both Richard Wagner and Frédéric Kalkbrenner’s solo piano versions of the Ninth include solo and choral voices, but Liszt being Liszt, these almost become an irrelevance. The Rodrigues version, which includes additional textures and a curious brief interlude at the beginning of the finale’s Alla Turca episode, while not straying far from Liszt, succeeds all the same. The fugal episodes, steadily rather than hectically helmed, provide an ecstatic release.

 

This recording’s main rival is Leon McCawley and Ashley Wass on Naxos, which positively breaks the tape at 61 minutes. Rodrigues and Smeets is however swifter in the Scherzo, some indication that their version offers a greater sense of contrast. Listening to Beethoven, Fast or Slow? Take your pick, one is unlikely to be disappointed either way.

 

LESLIE HOWARD PLAYS LISZT / The Hyperion Liszt Complete Solo Piano Works Edition

LISZT Piano Music

An Introduction to

the Complete Recordings

Leslie Howard, Piano

Hyperion LISZT1 / 2 CDs / TT: 2hr 38’54”

 

From 1985 to 1998, one of the greatest recording projects of all time was undertaken by a single pianist, the Australia-born Leslie Howard. Over 57 volumes and 95 compact discs released by the Hyperion label, he recorded the complete music for piano solo of Franz Liszt (1811-1886). The Hungary-born piano virtuoso revolutionised performance and piano literature of the 19^th century, which in turn defined the cult of the modern day performing virtuoso. Without Liszt, there would simply be no Horowitz or Lang Lang. Although derided by certain quarters of the critical fraternity, his contribution to the piano, however, is incalculable.

 

Howard’s recordings defined the length, breadth and depth of Liszt’s creative output and was very much a labour of love. He was however not finished post-1998, having unearthed another few more hours of unpublished, unedited and possibly suppressed works, later recorded on Hyperion, as well as all the two-piano transcriptions of Liszt’s symphonic poems on the Brilliant Classics label.

 

I had the fortune of witnessing Howard perform and meeting him on no less than four occasions (in London, Singapore and Bangkok) over a stretch of almost 30 years, and can attest that he is still a formidable Lisztian, undaunted by his septuagenarian status. One year ago (before Covid-19 struck) in a basement concert venue at a Bangkok shopping centre, his readings of Two Legends, Reminiscences de Norma and Un Sopiro still had the capacity to provoke the shock and awe that Liszt once inspired.

 

While the world gradually recovers from the pandemic aftershock, I plan (ever so optimistically) to listen to all these recordings in my free time and record my impressions and observations on this blog. These are not meant to be serious or scholarly reviews, but the musings by an enthusiastic listener with hopefully something to share. So why listen to over 120 hours of Liszt? Because it’s there? Because I’ve got nothing better to do? Because it’s great music or is it just pure curiosity? Perhaps a little bit of everything.

 

Back in 1998 when Howard first performed at the Singapore International Piano Festival, he recoiled at the sight of the CD sleeves (by no means the complete set, yet) which I whipped out for him to autograph, exclaiming, “You must be crazy to have all these!” My reply then should have been, “Who’s the crazier one, having recorded them all?”, but I kept my counsel.

So here goes.

 

The Introduction to the complete set (listed by Hyperion as LISZT1) is an excellent sampler with 39 separate pieces covering various aspects of Liszt’s inspiration and output. Howard’s pithy selections mixes familiar favourites with some totally obscure pieces, capped off with a performance of Totentanz with the Budapest Symphony conducted by Karl Anton Rickenbacher.

 

The programme was subdivided into six chapters over two discs, each with a different theme. Liszt The Poet celebrated the lyrical side of the composer, with works like Un Sospiro and Consolation No.5. Liszt The Patriot saw him at his most nationalistic, represented by Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 (with a short cadenza ad libitum), Csardas Obstinée and shorter folk-inspired pieces. Liszt The Magician plumbed the virtuoso aspect, typified by Rigoletto Paraphrase, Gnomenreigen and the Grand Galop Chromatique (possibly his most vulgar number).

 

Liszt The Franciscan probed the spiritual realms with St Francis Walking On The Waves and some of his more arcane shorts. Liszt The Romantic returned to some degree of familiarity, like Liebestraume No.3, and transcriptions of Schumann’s Widmung and Chopin’s My Joys. Liszt The Prophet portrayed a visionary in late works like Nuages Gris, Bagatelle sans Tonalité, En Reve, before closing with an imperious Totentanz. Each of its variations are also individually tracked, which is most helpful. With each performance nothing less than first rate, supplemented by excellent and authoritative sleeve notes, this is a most satisfying introduction to the legacy of Franz Liszt.

    

Rating: *****

 

 

LISZT Complete Solo Piano Music Vol.1:Waltzes

Leslie Howard, Piano

Hyperion 66201 / TT: 74’40”

 

Contrary to popular belief, there is more than one Mephisto Waltz. There are actually four, but only the first (which everyone knows as the Mephisto Waltz, which also exists in orchestral form) is ever performed in concert and piano competitions ad nauseum. Of devilish inspiration, these play on the premise of tritones (the diabolus in musicus) and similar intervals and discords that grate on 19^th century sensibilities. Similarly, there are also four Valses Oubliées (Forgotten Waltzes), of which the first is well-known as a popular encore.

 

Leslie Howard cleverly alternates between Valses Oubliées and Mephisto Waltzes, working through Nos.2, 3 and 4 (late works all), before closing with the familiar Firsts. This makes for an excellent sequence of listening and he throws in the once popular Valse-Impromptu and several less-known shorts into the mix. The famous Mephisto Waltz (No.1) is heard in an interesting version with extra bars which are invariably never played simply because nobody (except Howard) knows about it. Recorded in 1985, this was an auspicious start to the complete edition.  

 

Discovery of the Album:

 

Valse de Bravoure S.214 No.1 is a rare gem, delightfully playful and skittish, vulgar in a nice salon-like way, with the obvious emphasis on bravura.

 

Rating: *****

 

 

LISZT Complete Solo Piano Music Vol.2:

Ballades, Legends & Polonaises

Leslie Howard, Piano

Hyperion 66301 / TT: 72’32”

 

This was the first CD of the edition which I acquired, way back in 1989 at a Sunday brunchtime recital by Leslie Howard (with cellist Steven Isserlis) in Wigmore Hall, London. It cost me a princely GBP11 (then 3.3 Singdollars to 1 Sterling), but it was well worth the outlay. Of the paired works designated Ballades, Legends and Polonaises, only the second of each genre is performed with any regularity in recital, especially the Ballade No.2 in B minor.

 

It is a true classic, representative of Liszt’s brooding manner allied with the requisite fireworks. Howard performs the version with the quiet, reflective and frankly better ending, without the Horowitzian histrionics. Also included are the Berceuse and the short but quite lovely Impromptu (Nocturne) in F sharp major, the latter famous recorded by Horowitz in his late years.  

 

Discovery of the Album:

Polonaise Melancolique in C minor (S.223) is the unheralded First Polonaise (the Second in E major, is the famous one), imbued with a strong sense of tragedy but unjustifiably neglected. Some one should try this one out, a substitute for the overplayed Chopin polonaises.   

 

Rating: ****1/2

ASPECTS OF LISZT / STEVEN SPOONER Piano Recital / Review

ASPECTS OF LISZT

STEVEN SPOONER Piano Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Monday (4 September 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 September 2017 with the title "Taking on a dynamic range of Liszt".

Imagine coming on stage to give an all-Liszt recital and not knowing what pieces are to be performed. That was the quandary facing American pianist Steven Spooner, who had offered five lists of piano works by the virtuoso Hungarian pianist-composer for the audience to vote on before the concert was to begin.

Comprising mostly young people and their parents, the audience probably had the good sense of shunning the half-hour-long Sonata in B minor, instead opting for Franz Liszt's song transcriptions, Transcendental Études and Hungarian Rhapsodies. Despite being mostly shorter pieces to accomodate shorter concentration spans, it was still a daunting prospect.

One of Liszt's legacies was to promote the music of less celebrated colleagues by transcribing their songs as piano solos for performance. Spooner began with one selection apiece from Schubert's three great song-cycles. In Wohin? (from Die Schöne Müllerin) and Ständchen (Schwanengesang), he found a mellifluous singing line, with the echoing voices of the latter being a particular treat. These were contrasted with the seemingly optimistic galloping rhythm of Die Post (Winterreise), a song bearing false hope.

Liszt's filigreed take on Chopin's Maiden's Wish called for nimble fingers while the gift of romantic love in Schumann's Widmung (Dedication) was gratefully consummated in sweeping arpeggios and emphatic chords. Leaving the most difficult for the last, Schubert's Erlkönig only promised tetanic spasms from the right hand's repeated octaves with the left hand's octaves scrambling to keep up. The sense of desperation, of a father's plight in rescuing a sick child, was palpable, but unlike the song's plot, the performance did not end in tragedy.

Two of twelve Transcendental Etudes also gave a sense of breadth and depth that was Liszt's art. Preludio (No.1), just a minute long, was a warming up exercise for Harmonies du soir (No.11), a glorious paean to the riches of chordal piano writing.

Even the two Hungarian Rhapsodies performed were not familiar favourites. Some listeners might remember the great French pianist Cyprien Katsaris polishing off Hungarian Rhapsody No.5 some years ago, a funeral procession that carried the title Heröide-Elégiaque (Heroic Elegy).

Its lugubriousness was tempered by a central section of rare Chopinesque lyricism, and Spooner's reading showed that this rather than the oft-performed Funerailles might have been Liszt's true tribute to Chopin. More Magyar in spirit was the Hungarian Rhapsody No.13, and with Vladimir Horowitz's swashbuckling additions, Spooner raised the decibel level and lifted the roof off the piano.    

With the noisy audience enthused, Spooner's encore of Liszt rarely-heard Rienzi Paraphrase, using themes from Wagner's early opera, was another work that tested the Steinway's dynamic limits. To proved that utmost sensitivity was also an attribute of complete pianism, Chopin's melancholic Mazurka in A minor (Op.17 No.4) provided a sublime and quiet end to an otherwise stormy evening. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2016)

LISZT Mephisto Waltzes etc

CYPRIEN KATSARIS, Piano

Apex 2564 67410-2 / ****1/2

The piano music of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) has been celebrated for its Janus-like qualities. Juxtaposing the diabolical with the sacred in music paralleled his personal life of sinner-turned-penitent, a self-styled “pop star” virtuoso in his youth who spent his later years as an Abbe and sage. 

This recording by French-Cypriot pianist Cyprien Katsaris eloquently illustrates these diametrically opposed views, opening with the sublime Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude (Blessing of God in Solitude), where the spiritually serene and rapturous come together as never before.

Then follows the four Mephisto Waltzes, of which the First is the most often performed. Here the “evil” interval of the tritone (once referred to as “diabolus in musicus” and banned by the Vatican) is flaunted with wild abandon in a series of unbridled and frenzied dances. 

The rarely-heard Mephisto Polka and near-atonal Bagatelle Sans Tonalite are inserted as sinister miniatures, but the palate is cleansed with the Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, a grand treatise on the passacaglia form which concludes with the reassuring strains of a Bach chorale. Katsaris' pianistic journey from Hades to Paradise is absorbing and exhausting, and one to be savoured.  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2016)

LISZT Works for Two Pianos

Piano Duo Genova & Dimitrov

CPO 777 896-2 / ****1/2

The complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) have been recorded by Leslie Howard, however what is left are his works for piano 4 hands and two pianos. These are rightly considered obscure because of the paucity of concert performances. 

The excellent Bulgarian duo of Aglika Genova and Liuben Dimitrov serves up five tasty pieces, beginning with the Grand Concert Piece on Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, an oversized elaboration stringing together three miniatures. This is a musical case of making a mountain out of a molehill, but fun nonetheless.

Liszt's operatic conflations, the Reminiscences De Norma (after Bellini) and Reminiscences De Don Juan (after Mozart) are well-known in their piano solo versions. Heard on two pianos, the element of derring-do and risk is diminished on the performers’ parts but are nonetheless exciting. 

The best work is Concerto Pathetique, based on the Grosses Konzertsolo and employing the art of thematic transformation to be found in Liszt's symphonic poems and Sonata in B minor. Completing the album is the Hexameron, a fantastical set of variations on a Bellini theme with contributions from six different composers. This edition is shorter than the solo version, but still worth a listen for its share of high jinks.

CHOPIN Ballades

YUNDI, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 481 2443 / ****

Frederic Chopin's Four Ballades for piano are four of the Polish-born composer's most exquisite single movement essays, filled with passion, longing and fantasy. However these are more associated with literary rather than musical sources, with the musings of Adam Mickiwiecz, regarded as Poland's national poet, cited as major inspirations. 

The Ballades get what one expects from Li Yundi, who takes a more tempered approach than his rival Lang Lang, without the agogic distortions and deliberately ear-catching exaggerations experienced in concert.

His playing is polished, tasteful, and not without moments of aural beauty. Of the four, the Second Ballade Op.38, with its alternating calm and violence, gets the most satisfying performance. By mostly sticking to the middle of the road, he does not add much more to what regular listeners know about Chopin. 

It is the fillers which hold greater interest. The Berceuse Op.57 is a model of elegant poise, and Yundi fares best in the Four Mazurkas Op.17, where he is one with Chopin's rhythmic subtlety and aching nostalgia.

ADAM GYÖRGY PIANO RECITAL / Review

ADAM GYÖRGY Piano Recital

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (29 April 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 May 2016 with the title "Adam György saved devilish best for last".

Piano recitals at Esplanade Concert Hall are a relative rarity, as there are not many pianists who can attract a large audience for its voluminous capacity. Martha Argerich, Leif Ove Andsnes and Lang Lang will do just that. Although not a household name, Hungarian-born pianist Adam György, well known for his summer piano academies in his homeland and Bali, however drew a sizeable crowd for his 80-minute recital.

He opened with an original composition, entitled A Day In New York, which in its 21-minute duration described sanguine feelings about leaving his native Hungary and settling in the “Big Apple”. His style is highly tonal, written in the popular New Age, minimalistic manner geared towards easy listening. A couple of Hungarian folksongs, and possibly snatches of Ravel and Janacek, were quoted and the mood is one of benign and placid indolence, which he captured with a stylish nonchalance. 

Given the genteel manner of this sonata-fantasie which never raised the temperature beyond fever pitch, György might be forgiven for a similar approach to Liszt's mighty Sonata in B minor. One might even say that his performance was too polite. Where barnstorming through the demanding octave passages was de rigeuer for most, he chose to skate over these as undemonstratively as possible. Neither hitting bumps nor inducing goosebumps, safety first seemed to be the presiding objective.

The central chorale in F sharp major was luminously projected, suggesting Liszt's spirituality was not a closed book for him, and the tricky fugal section was artfully negotiated. The quiet final chords provided almost the perfect denouement until some imbecile's handphone or watch alarm had to go off at the worst possible moment. Compared with Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa's wild steroid-pumped account of the same work in the same venue last year, György's sounded like an even-tempered version on Prozac.

 

The rest of the programme comprised wholly of Liszt. His Rigoletto Paraphrase had probably seen better days, with the filigreed ornamentation gingerly rather than effortlessly conceived. His lightness of touch was far better suited for La Campanella, which rang with clarity and its wide right-hand leaps comfortably surmounted.

Similarly, the repeated notes and figurations for the right hand in the popular Second Hungarian Rhapsody posed little problems in an exciting performance that brought out the patented if hardly authentic Magyar swagger. There are few Liszt warhorses that do not generate some form of standing ovation, and so large segments of the audience obliged.

Clearly György was reserving himself and leaving the best for the last. The encore was his own conflation of the Mendelssohn-Liszt Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream, combining the flittering Dance of the Elves with Vladimir Horowitz's insanely camp variations. Prompting a long line for autographs after the concert, that final piece of dare-devilry was alone worth the ticket of entry.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, December 2014)

HAYDN Piano Sonatas Vol.1

HIROAKI TAKENOUCHI, Piano

Artalinna A006 / ****1/2

Of the keyboard works composed during the classical period, the over 60 or so sonatas of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) stand proud. While Beethoven’s 32 sonatas were defined by his personal angst and Mozart’s 18 by his elegance, Haydn was distinguished by his wit and humour, often appearing in unexpected guises. In Volume 1 of a projected cycle, young Japanese pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi surveys four relatively unfamiliar sonatas, composed between 1774 and 1780, while the Austrian master was still an employee as a court musician of Count Esterhazy.

Perhaps the least obscure is the D major sonata (No.37), the opening theme of which was itself a subject of parody in Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto. The C major sonata (No.21) is lit up by cheery outer movements, while the E flat major sonata (No.25), with symphonic pretensions in its first movement, looks forward to the “large” sonata (No.52, to come in a later instalment) in the same key. 

The G major sonata (No.39) is arguably the greatest of the foursome, something which may have influenced the young Beethoven. Takenouchi’s crisp and lightly articulated touch serves these minor masterpieces well, capturing their free spirited musings with much eloquence. Further volumes are keenly anticipated. 

LISZT Orchestral Works

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig 

KURT MASUR

EMI Classics 085160 1 (7 CDs) / ****1/2

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was credited to have “invented” the symphonic poem or tone poem as a musical genre. However, only Les Préludes, the third of twelve such essays, is regularly performed in concert. His efforts have even been overshadowed by those of Richard Strauss, Sibelius and Rachmaninov in terms of popularity. 

Symphonic poems are single movement works, usually of literary inspiration, which rely on the transformation or metamorphosis of themes and motifs, a romantic era development of the tried and tested sonata form. Mazeppa, the legend of a disgraced Polish nobleman driven into exile (tied to a horse and sent to the steppes), uses the same music as the famous piano étude, while Hungaria resembles several of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies in form. The lesser known Orpheus, Prometheus and Hamlet are also worth hearing for their dramatic impact.

This was the first ever recorded survey of the complete set, dating from the early 1980s of the former communist East Germany, which still stand the test of time. Also included in this generous box-set are the Faust and Dante Symphonies (both with choral endings), the first two Mephisto Waltzes, and complete works for piano and orchestra with excellent French pianist Michel Béroff as soloist. Note also that the Second Piano Concerto and Totentanz (variations on the medieval Dies Irae chant) also employ thematic transformation, which effectively makes them symphonic poems with piano. Liszt was an original compositional talent, without a doubt, as these recordings amply demonstrate. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2013)

LISZT Works for Piano & Orchestra

Fabula Classica 2222 / ****1/2

Given that Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was possibly the greatest pianist-composer ever lived, his works for piano and orchestra are surprisingly short-winded. Both piano concertos of his run under 20 minutes, as if his brand of virtuosity was best served in short but sustained bursts. This anthology of historical recordings has only space for his Second Piano Concerto in A major, but it gets a coruscating yet seamless performance from the Chilean Claudio Arrau (with the New York Philharmonic and Dimitri Mitropoulos in 1943), one of the great Lisztians of our time.

The devil-may-care stance adopted by the mercurial Italian Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli for Totentanz, variations on the medieval chant Dies Irae, was entirely appropriate in his 1961 outing in Turin. He plays an edition that differs from the version commonly heard nowadays. The only caveat: this recording has the worst sound of all. The Hungarian Fantasy, a scintillating arrangement of his Hungarian Rhapsody No.14, sees the Briton Solomon in imperious form in 1948, eight years before his debilitating stroke. The genuine rarity is Malediction for piano and strings, an early work of astonishing prescience for its time, here played by a young Alfred Brendel in a stereo recording from 1958. Lovers of Liszt should not pass up this album of vintage performances.

  

PICTURES

ALICE SARA OTT, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 479 0088 / ***1/2

This album is a live recording from the 2012 White Nights music festival in Saint Petersburg, coupling two major repertoire works – Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition and Schubert’s Sonata in D major (D.850) – not often heard in tandem. In fact there is nothing uniting these works thematically or stylistically. The young German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott is technically secure in the Mussorgsky, but falls short on the element of fantasy that makes its disparate pieces so intriguing. She performs the original version, which means that Bydlo (The Ox Cart) begins loud before receding into the distance. She plays everything straight and there are no additions of her own to pique or surprise the listener.

In certain ways, the Schubert gives rein more to her imagination. The tensions of storm and stress are evident in the vigorous first movement, while the mastery of song comes to the fore for the slow movement. The Scherzo dances along its merry way before the good-natured humour of the finale, delicately crafted over a gentle tick-tock rhythm steals the show. The contrasting facets of Schubert’s troubled persona in his final years are keenly brought out, which more than makes up for the relative  disappointment of the Mussorgsky Pictures.