Liszt - Piano Works [Ulyanova-Caldine]Here's my second Liszt recital of the year, adding to the last one i reviewed last month by Stephen Hough [20th October 2010], Liszt certainly isn't one of my favourite Composers, he wouldn't / doesn't get into my top 20, but on these two recitals i played recently, i'm beginning to warm to him, each recital is fairly similar to one another.
Elena Ulyanova-Caldine is unknown to me, i believe she comes from the Ukraine, but now lives in America, and i guess married a Caldine, that's where the double barrelled name comes from, the booklet cover is really good, i bought this on Ebay, mainly because it looked so good [photography by Walter Merriam], Elena's wearing a red ball gown, and a really fetching necklace, and a beaming smile, and sitting with her back to the piano, i like the way the piano is cropped at an angle.
Unlike Chopin, Liszt's piano oeuvre doesn't easily fit into neat pigeon holes, it's all over the place, Liszt created a very lot of piano works, much of it averagely good, and he has a tendency to go for the virtuosity slant, and his compositions can be devoid somewhat of poetry and lyricism, and architecture too, but here and there he created a true work of genius.
Out of these six works, i was most impressed with Liszt's transcription of Schubert's 'The Trout', the shortest work on the disc at under 5 minutes, i like the way Liszt creates a constant rippling effect throughout the piece, mimicking the story line of the trout, it sounds like a bunch of variations, the main theme of Schubert's song is used with extra ripples and splashes [0:39-1:25], right afterwards the complexity increases [1:25-2:07], making it sound like it's played by three hands!, the work gains further momentum and complexity, with lovely treble trills in the right hand [2:23-2:46], this is the best part of the piece for me, and in the coda, the main tune is played sweetly in the treble [3:41-4:00], a lovely transcription of Schubert's masterpiece.
Here's Sergey Kuznetsov playing 'Die Forelle' on YouTube.
