That’s the problem with Liszt: SOME of his music is vulgar. Other pieces are of great musical quality, if you care to work a LOT on your pianism to overcome or master the technical difficulties. Other (late) works are experimental, daring and very evocative.
It’s surprising that still today, world famous pianists can have such a one-dimensional, unnuanced view of who Liszt was - he was such a multifaceted man.
Of all people, the Hungarian-born pianist S. who studied at the Liszt-academy.
In general, I don’t like pianists who think that the German/Austrian repertoire is superior. It shows a limited taste.
Not a living pianist, but I was a bit sad to learn how small Barere’s repertoire was. I was kind of hoping he’d played all the major Liszt and Chopin works, as well as a substantial amount of the Russian repertoire, but he didn’t play much besides what’s on the APR CDs.
I think so too. Liszt always sounds best when presented by musicians, as opposed to virtuosos. Lupu belongs in the no-Liszt category too, and yet as with Schnabel he did the Sonata, and as expected it rocks.
Schiff’s statements on Liszt are mind-boggling… and lose him credibility because they are inaccurate. For starters, Liszt became a hermit (so to speak) for the first time after his father died, and long before women and rockstarism entered into it. It’s one thing to disagree with someone’s aesthetics, but another to dismiss them. Liszt lived a very full and multidimensional life, and the music world is much the better for it.
Roger Muraro’s repertoire is quite limited but he plays very big pieces. So by that he plays the complete Messiaen 20 & Albeniz Iberia, but otherwise not so much, like some Chopin, some Rachmaninoff, Ravel PC, Liszt Sonata. The selection isn’t wide.
With Schiff, well, he’s always given the impression of being a rather chaste & moral purist (pedant?). The Liszt comments reinforce that. I’m not into Liszt but after reading Walker’s 3 volumes, Schiff’s description says more about him than L.
Lupu did cross my mind. No idea he did the sonata! It’s a bootleg?
Perahia surprisingly plays some of the song transcriptions and little else I’ve seen.
He only played it very briefly, during the 89/90 season. No professional recs as far as I know, but Robin caught it in LA, and Karl in Stuttgart. U wanna hear it?
Yeah, but that was probably because he didn’t have too many concerts. I’m sure that if he was engaged more often, he would learning mad rep - especially concerti. Remember, when he died - he learned that Grieg Concerto specifically for that performance.
His son recalls in an interview that Barere would practice a ton of random rep which he didn’t perform, just randomly when he felt like practicing.
Apparently this included the Chopin b minor Sonata, which his son remembers he worked on “the whole day”.
Sum of the major unrecorded rep I can think of the top of my head:
4 Chopin Ballades (Bar’s son remembers he fucked up the 2nd Ballade once when he played the 4 of them and didn’t play no 2 after that)
Schumann Symphonic Etudes (seen this on the Australian or New Zealand 1947 tour)
Tchaik 1 (I believe he broadcast this at least once from Carnegie)
Godowsky Fledermaus
Scriabin 4
Scriabin 5 (Bar’s son remembers how he and his father had to go play it the same day in different venues)
Liszt Rhapsody 6, Polonaise No 2
Chopin Polonaise op 53
Chopin 10-1, 25-11 (dose are fuckin meant for da BAR insane raw dex)
Glinka-Balakirev Da Lark
Fun fact: Barere used Rachmaninoff’s own concert grand for some of his recitals
Also - the Rach 2nd AND THIRD was in his rep according to a random interview I’ve read, no idea if it is really true
