Notes and Editorial Reviews
The maverick pianist Cyprien Katsaris has unleashed a torrent of recordings on his Piano 21 label and the first volume in his Liszt series is no different from the others in presenting archive performances alongside much more recent fare.
There are thus a lot of different locations and dates, which are noted in gruesome detail in the head note.
The first eight tracks on CD1, the
Hungarian Rhapsodies, the two
Elegies and
Liebesträume and the
Klavierstücke No.2 are all very recent, dating from 2011, as is
Sospiri. The
Rhapsodies are galvanizing, intrepid, outsize, brilliantly engaging and sometimes very textually suspect. Whether these
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emendations persuade one that the music is being caricatured is a decision for you. Maybe the octave cadential passage in No.2 - he plays four of the twelve, by the way - is a clincher for the nay-sayer; but, then, maybe not. This is edge of the seat playing, and the highly personalised emendations and interpolations part of his posthumous relationship with Liszt. With the other works he has less need to drape his own colours, rather to rely on acute phrasing and warmth of tone. That said, though,
Liebesträume is quite direct. The third of the
Klavierstücke is played with touching simplicity. The first four
Klavierstücke were recorded live in June 1975, at Fête Romantiques de Nohant and are private recordings. The first disc ends with the Second Piano Concerto played by the German Symphony Orchestra, Berlin directed by Arild Remmereit at the Philharmonie in Berlin in 2007. This is a Katsaris speciality, with dramatic accelerandi, vast reserves of energy and excitement, and a devil take the hindmost feel throughout. Remarkable.
The second disc presents the darker side of Liszt’s imagination with a sequence of lugubrious, and death-fixated pieces. Again, textual fidelity is certainly not always a given but the drum roll evocations in the
Trauer-Vorspiel und Trauermarsch are viscerally arresting,
Unstern! is profoundly sepulchral whilst heroic pianism infuses
RW - Venezia . It would be easy, and tempting, to cite Horowitz as a stylistic model for the live 1974 performance, given somewhere in France, of the Sonata in B minor. It gives an indication of the kind of passion that emanates from Katsaris’s performance, but the correspondence is only partial. The drama here is intense, even coruscating, and it’s a performance that should be heard by all Lisztians, even if they part company from it.
Recording quality varies from location to location, from 1974 (basic, decent) to 2011 (excellent) and points in-between.
These two discs are clearly not without their contentious textual moments. Some will reject the performances on those grounds alone. Katsaris is never frivolous, though he is flamboyant, and he is always passionate, declamatory, and exciting. It’s hard to reject so compelling a performer.
-- Jonathan Woolf , MusicWeb International
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Works on This Recording
5.
Elegy for Piano no 1, S 196 "Puszta" by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1874; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 02/2011/04/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg /
Length: 5 Minutes 55 Secs.
6.
Elegy for Piano no 2, S 197 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1877; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 02/2011/04/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg /
Length: 4 Minutes 45 Secs.
7.
Liebesträume for Piano, S 541: no 3, O Lieb, so lang by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: circa 1850; Weimar, Germany
Date of Recording: 02/2011/04/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg /
Length: 4 Minutes 5 Secs.
8.
Piece for Piano in A flat major, S 189a by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Date of Recording: 02/2011/04/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg /
Length: 1 Minutes 37 Secs.
9.
Kleine Klavierstücke (5), S 192 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1865-1879; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 06/20/1975
Venue: Live Fêtes Romantiques de Nohant
Length: 7 Minutes 34 Secs.
10.
Kleine Klavierstücke (5), S 192: no 5, Sospiri by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1865-1879; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 02/2011/04/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg /
Length: 4 Minutes 1 Secs.
11.
Concerto for Piano no 2 in A major, S 125 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1839/1861; Weimar, Germany
Date of Recording: 05/01/2007
Venue: Live Berlin Philharmonie, Großer Saal
Length: 18 Minutes 11 Secs.
12.
Trauervorspiel for Piano, S 206 no 1 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1885; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 02/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg
13.
Trauermarsch for Piano, S 206 no 2 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1885; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 02/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg
14.
Unstern: sinistre, disastro for Piano, S 208 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: after 1880; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 02/2011
Venue: Tonstudio Teije van Geest, Heidelberg /
Length: 6 Minutes 33 Secs.
15.
Nuages gris for Piano, S 199 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1881; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 12/20/1989
Venue: Live Tsuda Hall, Tokyo
Length: 2 Minutes 59 Secs.
18.
R. W. - Venezia, S 201 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1883; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 12/20/1989
Venue: Live Tsuda Hall, Tokyo
Length: 3 Minutes 4 Secs.
19.
Am Grabe Richard Wagners for Piano, S 202 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1883; Rome, Italy
Date of Recording: 12/20/1989
Venue: Live Tsuda Hall, Tokyo
Length: 3 Minutes 0 Secs.
20.
Sonata for Piano in B minor, S 178 by Franz Liszt
Performer:
Cyprien Katsaris (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1852-1853; Weimar, Germany
Date of Recording: 1973
Venue: Live France
Length: 29 Minutes 35 Secs.
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