LISZT Bénédiction de Dieu VLADIMIR 12 NI6212 FELTSMANNI 6212 1 Franz Liszt Vladimir Feltsman on Nimbus Bénédiction de Dieu J S Bach NI2541 7 Keyboard Concertos, with the Orchestra of St Luke’s NI2549 Art of Fugue Vladimir Feltsman NI2507 Goldberg Variations NI2516 The Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2 1 Liebesträume, No. 3 in A flat major (1850) 4.53 NI6176 The Six English Suites NI6207 The Six Partitas 2 Ballade No. 2 in B minor (1853) 14.47 Six Consolations (1850) 16.20 Beethoven 3 I Andante con moto 1.11 NI2561 Piano Sonatas Op.106 ‘Hammerklavier’; Op.101 NI2575 Piano Sonatas Op.109; Op.110; Op.111 4 II Un poco piu mosso 3.08 NI6120 Piano Sonatas ‘Pathetique’; ‘Moonlight’; ‘Appassionata’ 5 III Lento placido 4.01 Chopin 6 IV Quasi adagio 2.31 NI6184 The Complete Waltzes & Impromptus 7 V Andantino 2.37 NI6128 Four Ballades; Fantasie in F minor; Polonaise-Fantasie 8 VI Allegretto sempre cantabile 2.52 NI6126 The Complete Nocturnes; Barcarolle; Berceuse 9 Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude (1853) 17.26 NI6162 A Tribute to Tchaikovsky 10 Berceuse in F sharp major (1876) 3.34 A programme of short characteristic pieces 11 Elegia (1874) 5.19 NI6148 A Tribute to Rachmaninoff Includes Concerto No.3, conducted by Mikhail Pletnev 12 La lugubre gondola (2nd version) (1885) 8.34 NI6198 A Tribute to Scriabin 13 En rêve, nocturne (1886) 2.25 Includes Sonata no.4 & Vers la flamme Total playing time 73.16 For track list visit www.wyastone.co.uk 2 NI6212 NI 6212 11 A dedicated educator of young musicians, Mr. Feltsman holds the Distinguished Franz Liszt carried a walking stick with the faces of St. Francis of Assisi, Faust’s Chair of Professor of Piano at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and Gretchen and Mephistopheles carved on it. Apparently he longed for the Divine, is a member of the piano faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. craved women and worldly pleasures, and was fascinated by the diabolical. These He is the founder and Artistic Director of the International Festival-Institute three passions, three aspects of his character, shaped and defined both his private life PianoSummer at SUNY New Paltz, a three-week-long, intensive training and his creativity, although it seems he had better luck reconciling his conflicting program for advanced piano students that attracts major young talents from all aspirations in music than in life. His finest work, the Sonata in B minor for piano, is a over the world. textbook of his amazing craft of transformation: one theme, one element appears in different guises – divine, human, and diabolical – creating an incredible inner drama Mr. Feltsman’s extensive discography has been released on the Melodiya, Sony of temptation and turbulent passion stemming from one source. Classical, and Nimbus labels. His discography includes eight albums of clavier Liszt was a Renaissance man – pianist, composer, conductor, educator, writer, tireless works of J.S. Bach, recordings of Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas, solo piano champion of music old and new, and a great teacher. Many major pianists of the works of Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Messiaen and Silvestrov, twentieth century belonged to the lineage of Liszt and his students, a lineage that is still as well as concerti by Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and alive today. He was one of the most influential artists and creative personalities of the Prokofiev. nineteenth century; his influence is apparent in the music of Wagner and Tchaikovsky, Franck and Saint-Saens, Reger, Debussy and Ravel, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, Bartok Mr. Feltsman is an American citizen and lives in upstate New York. and Messiaen. He believed in the high calling of the artist and the transcendental power of music. He was a man of character and convictions who tried to realize his www.feltsman.com global vision and goals until the end of his life. Over time it became a sign of “good taste and sophistication” to be condescending towards Liszt the composer. It is true that the quality of his work is uneven and there is some “incidental” music that ought not to have been published at all. Nevertheless, he created a body of compositions of the finest quality, primarily for piano, that is not inferior to the work of his contemporaries Chopin and Schumann. Judged (a terrible word!) by his best works, Liszt was clearly a great innovator of form, a composer who found his own musical language and aesthetics and created his own piano technique. 10 NI6212 NI 6212 3 The greatest pianist of his time, Liszt opened a new era in piano performance, turning it into a happening, an event. Inspired by Paganini, he transformed the status of the VLADIMIR FELTSMAN virtuoso performer and became the first celebrity musician, with an image like that of a rock star today. He is rightly credited with the invention of the recital: before Liszt, Pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman is one of the most versatile and public concerts usually featured several musicians, but after him, a recital – a constantly interesting musicians of our time. His vast repertoire encompasses performance by just one musician – became a staple, a norm that endures today. music from the Baroque to 20th-century composers. A regular guest soloist with leading symphony orchestras in the United States and abroad, he appears in the This recording brings together thirteen compositions, most written during Liszt’s very most prestigious concert series and music festivals all over the world. productive period from the middle 1840s to the early 1850s. The last two, however, were written in 1880s towards the end of his life and are strikingly different. The late works explore new horizons and open new possibilities of musical language. They are Born in Moscow in 1952, Mr. Feltsman debuted with the Moscow Philharmonic private meditations, austere, almost minimalist in their precision: the harmonic at age 11. In 1969, he entered the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory of foundation becomes fluid and ambiguous and tonality as such is taken away from Music to study piano under the guidance of Professor Jacob Flier. He also studied under our feet. We are on quicksand here, without gravitation to a definite key, conducting at both the Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) exploring uncharted territory. These late works of Liszt contain prophetic insights into Conservatories. In 1971, Mr. Feltsman won the Grand Prix at the Marguerite Long the future of music. International Piano Competition in Paris; extensive touring throughout the former Soviet Union, Europe and Japan followed this. Putting together an album is unavoidably a personal endeavor that reflects the taste of compiler. All the compositions selected for this recording were given titles by Liszt and In 1979, because of his growing discontent with the restrictions on artistic refer to extra-musical sources, primarily drawn from poetry. Indeed, the majority of freedom under the Soviet regime, Mr. Feltsman signaled his intention to emigrate his works (and those of many other romantic composers) were inspired by such by applying for an exit visa. In response, he was immediately banned from extra-musical subjects. Because of this, it is easy to label his music as “programmatic”. performing in public and his recordings were suppressed. After eight years of However, such labels can be and often are misleading. The works of Liszt are not virtual artistic exile, he was finally granted permission to leave the Soviet Union. illustrations but purely musical events, coherent wholes that stand on their own, Upon his arrival in the United States in 1987, Mr. Feltsman was warmly greeted independent of the source of inspiration. As anyone familiar with the creative process can confirm, an initial idea, an inspiration, is not a gradual process, not an invention, at the White House, where he performed his first recital in North America. That but an instantaneous flash of recognition, a non-verbal comprehension and vision of same year, his debut at Carnegie Hall established him as a major pianist on the American and international scene. 4 NI6212 NI 6212 9 opening motif and the recitative becomes a song, a somber litany. After a descending the whole. Later the artist gives a distinct form to this vision and the initial idea or passage, this theme comes back a half tone lower. The middle section (on the dominant inspiration becomes a work of art. The artist is at the same time both a tool and a creator. to tentative F sharp) creates a tangible impression of a rocking gondola, with the sigh motive in chords on top and a repeated ostinato figure in the bass going up and down: Liebestraum No. 3 in A flat major belongs to a set of three Liebestraume (Dreams of Love) we go back and forth with the gradually increasing swing of the pendulum. The litany published by Liszt in 1850 in two formats, both as piano solos and as songs for soprano motive returns appassionato on octaves and a descending passage follows – this time in and piano. The first and second songs in the set are based on poems by Ludwig Uhland octaves indicated fff. The opening theme returns in full force, but suddenly loses its and the third on a poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath. Each song elaborates a specific kind energy, descending by half tones, as if unable to stop this disintegration. The recitative of love. The first celebrates religious or sanctified love. The second tells of erotic inevitably follows and then stops – nothing is resolved and we are back where we ecstasy: “I was dead from the bliss of love, I lay buried in her arms.” In the third song started.