Liszt: Winterreise (after Schubert)

Pierdomenico, Leonardo

PCL 10251

A new concept album by Leonardo Pierdomenico, in which Love and Death interact in their own merciful or lugubrious way.

Franz Liszt was fascinated by the songs of Schubert, in a time when the recognition of the Viennese genius was at a low tide. He transcribed a substantial quantity of them for piano solo, sometimes merely combining the existing solo voice and accompaniment, but also creating highly elaborate versions, full of virtuoso and intricate embellishments. This album offers a selection of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, the journey of a disillusioned young lover into oblivion and death.

The Gretchen section from Liszt’s own Faust Symphony is the bridge towards the Totentanz, for piano solo, a wild and hallucinatory evocation of Death, through the quoting of the Gregorian hymn of Dies Irae, a masterpiece of unparalleled imagination and frenzy.

This third recording for Piano Classics by young Italian pianist Leonardo Pierdomenico firmly establishes his position as one of the most promising artists of his generation. His first album with works by Franz Liszt (PCL10151) received rave reviews from the international press, among which the prestigious Gramaphone Critic’s Choice: “His highly developed technique and cultivated sound, both adaptable to a variety of affects, are wedded to those twin essentials for artistic Liszt-playing: imagination combined with thoroughgoing, scrupulous musicality.” His second album with the Beethoven/Liszt Symphony 5 and the Beethoven/Alkan 3rd Piano Concerto (PCL10224) made the critic of Fanfare declare Pierdomenico as “the Carlos Kleiber of the piano”.

CD x 1

Piano Classics

5.06.2023

5029365102513