Deutsche Grammophon Celebrates Liszt’s Bicentenary with Unreleased Tracks

One of the more intriguing releases this year will be The Liszt Legacy, a 10-CD box set that brings together five great piano virtuosos of the past in a staggering display of virtuosity and "old-style" pianism - quite unlike anything else on offer in the Liszt Year. The artists can be regarded as Liszt's heirs for their astounding virtuosic command, for having created a repertoire of their own, or for having studied with Liszt's own pupils or grand-pupils. The box draws exclusively on recordings from the American Decca and Westminster labels, most of which have never been released on CD, and, in the case of Claudio Arrau, are now being released for the very first time. The recordings, from the 1950s and early 1960s, both mono and stereo, have all been painstakingly restored from the best source material available. The box set will be released on November 15.

Reflecting on his long career, Claudio Arrau recalled his early German training as a protégé of the Liszt pupil Martin Krause, whose rigorous standards left an indelible impression on the youthful pianist. Krause spoke in detail about Liszt's own playing, his way of varying trills and breaking chords so that they would have a meaning derived from what came before. Of particular interest to collectors will be five previously unreleased performances of "name" Beethoven sonatas as well as a newly unearthed Chopin F Minor Fantasy, all recorded during Arrau's brief association with American Decca in the early 1950s.

In addition to his colossal reputation as a Liszt interpreter, Ferruccio Busoni embraced Liszt's legacy as a transcriber and editor with help from his best-known and arguably most accomplished pupil Egon Petri. Petri, in turn, emulated his mentor's penchant for the piano literature's large-scale works served up in equally large, stamina-testing programs. In the wrong hands, Busoni's big chords and thick polyphonic textures can sound upholstered and even bombastic; not so, however, when rendered with Petri's forceful clarity and effortless sense of orchestral sweep. In addition, the all-Liszt recital, originally released to commemorate the composer's 150th birthday in 1961, elicited high praise from High Fidelity magazine's hard-to-please critic Harris Goldsmith, who wrote that "Petri's work is hewn rather than chiseled, and yet there are many moments of ravishing delicacy and cultivated feeling...the quality that stands out the most, in my mind, is the infallible integrity of his interpretations."

If Petri's artistry evokes wide canvases, imposing architecture and sobriety, that of Benno Moiseiwitsch was all about charm, elegance and a liberal approach to textual fidelity. Always searching for inner voices, Moiseiwitsch was a master of the kind of tempo fluctuations and tonal gradations that typified many of his fellow Theodor Leschetizky pupils (Leschetizky studied with Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny, who went on to teach the young Liszt). Although his playing mellowed in old age, Moiseiwitsch's innate lyricism and narrative gifts remained seductively intact, as borne out in his final studio recordings, made for American Decca in 1961 and collected here complete for the first time on CD.

The first decade of long playing recordings not only helped bring veterans like Petri and Moiseiwitsch into the limelight, but also gave exposure to emerging artists, including this collection's two youngest pianists, both born in 1923. In fact, Raymond Lewenthal's first commercial recordings represented less of a beginning than a hard-won rebuilding of a promising career. In August 1953, he was savagely attacked and in New York's Central Park by a gang of hoodlums, leaving him with seven broKen Bones in his hands and arms. After two years of difficult rehabilitation, Lewenthal reinvented himself as a provocative program builder and champion of unsung yet worthy fare by virtuoso composer/pianists in the Liszt tradition.

Liszt's works based on nationalistic themes such as the Hungarian Rhapsodies and the Rhapsodie espagnole require transcendent virtuosity and idiomatic commitment, as do the large-scale piano cycles by Isaac Albéniz (himself a Liszt pupil) and Enrique Granados. Alicia de Larrocha is certainly one of the finest interpreters of Granados on record and it helped that her mother and her aunt were disciples of the composer, as was her principal teacher Frank Marshall. In this first and, in some ways, best of de Larrocha's four commercial recordings of Goyescas, one readily perceives how the pianist's affinity borders on the clairvoyant.

THE LISZT LEGACY

CLAUDIO ARRAU - First release
CD 1
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas op. 106 "Hammerklavier" | op. 13 "Pathétique"
CD 2
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas op. 27 no. 2 "Moonlight" | op. 57 "Appassionata" | op. 81a "Les Adieux"; Chopin: Fantaisie op. 49

ALICIA DE LARROCHA - First release on CD
CD 3
Turina: Danzas fantásticas | Preludios op. 80 | Recuerdos de la antigua España | Partita op. 57; Granados: Escenas románticas
CD 4
Granados: Goyescas | El pelele Mompou: Impresiones íntimas

RAYMOND LEWENTHAL - First release on CD
CD 5
Scriabin: 24 Préludes op. 11 | 5 Préludes op. 74 | Fantasia op. 28 | Vers la flamme; Encores by Saint-Saëns/Godowsky | Mendelssohn/Liszt | Rachmaninov/Lewenthal
CD 6
Toccatas by Schumann | Alkan | Czerny | Della Ciaia | J. S. Bach | Prokofiev | Debussy | Ravel Zhelobinsky | Lewenthal | Menotti Encores by Rubinstein | Massenet | Schubert/Liszt | Debussy | Liszt

BENNO MOISEIWITSCH - First release on CD
CD 7
Schumann: Carnaval | Kreisleriana | Kinderszenen | Arabeske
CD 8
Mussorgsky/Moiseiwitsch: Pictures at an Exhibition
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas op. 27 no. 2 "Moonlight" | op. 81a "Les Adieux" | Andante favori; Schumann: Vogel als Prophet | Romance op. 28 no. 2

EGON PETRI - First release on CD
CD 9
Liszt: Paraphrases and Transcriptions from Mendelssohn | Gounod | Beethoven
Liszt/Busoni: Mephisto Waltz no. 1 | "Figaro" Fantasy Busoni: Fantasia contrappuntistica
CD 10
Busoni | Petri: Transcriptions from Bach & Buxtehude

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