Document

  1997
    November 1997
        Instrumental
                Liszt Piano Works, Volumes 3 and 4.

Liszt Piano Works, Volume 3. Philip Thomson (pf).

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 553073 (68 minutes: DDD).

Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, S173 – No. 1, Invocation; No. 2, Ave Maria; No. 3, Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude; No. 4, Pensee des morts; No. 5, Pater noster; No. 6, Hymne de l’enfant a son reveil. Les morts, S516. Resignazione, S187a. Ungarns Gott, S543a.

Liszt Piano Music, Volume 4. Philip Thomson (pf).

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 553516 (64 minutes: DDD).

Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, S173 – No. 7, Funerailles; No. 8, Miserere, d’apres Palestrina; No. 9, Andante lagrimoso; No. 10, Cantique d’amour. Ave Maria in D flat, S504. Ave Maria in G, S545. Ave Maria in E, S182. Ave Maria d’Arcadelt, S183 No. 2. Six Consolations, S172. Ungarns Gott, S543b.

Benediction – selected comparison:

Hough (11/94) (VIRG) CUV5 61129-2

Funerailles – selected comparison:

Zimerman (10/91) (DG) 431 780-2GH

Volumes 3 and 4 in Naxos’s fast-progressing Liszt cycle consist of the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, the six Consolations and an intriguing miscellany of short pieces (Ungarns Gott appears in both two-hand and left-hand versions). The pianist is Philip Thomson, a young Canadian – the notes are shy regarding his precise age – of immense talent. The Harmonies are ten meditations of alternating simple piety and epic grandeur inspired by Lamartine and offering the performer a daunting pianistic and imaginative challenge. Often considered uneven, the Harmonies’ lesser works surely provide a suitable context for the greater (for “Funerailles”, the “Benediction” and “Pensee des morts”) and their overall effect can be overwhelming. Understandably, the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses were among Liszt’s favourites.

Happiest in heaven-storming exultance and bravura, Thomson reminds us that “Invocation” is not only the gateway to Liszt’s agony and ecstasy but the dawn of a wholly original pianism, setting the entire keyboard ablaze with quasi-orchestral sonorities. He allows himself a virtuoso fling or added opulence at the delirious climax of “Benediction” – a freedom that Liszt (most generous of listeners) would surely have applauded – and his massive sonority makes Liszt’s cry to the heavens, his, literally, ‘speaking’ eloquence in “Pensee des morts”, an almost palpable experience.

Elsewhere in the Six Consolations it could be argued that Thomson allows Liszt his own voice a little too readily. His lack of idiosyncrasy is admirable yet the playing (particularly in the D flat Consolation) shows a touch of complacency, making something ordinary out of one of Liszt’s most beloved miniatures. Yet even if Thomson is hardly in the same league as Krystian Zimerman in “Funerailles”, Stephen Hough in the “Benediction”, or most of all Richter (Philips, 11/91 – nla) in The Bells of Rome – “Ave Maria” and the “Andante lagrimoso” (music which in its slow, painful climbing and harmonic ambiguity prophesies the luminous intricacy of ‘late’ Faure), his achievement is remarkable and his inclusion of Les morts, a powerful elegy in memory of Liszt’s son, Daniel, who died in his father’s arms at the age of 20, is a superb bonus. The recordings are admirable, among the finest I have heard from this source, and the notes are detailed, full of relevant quotations and with several absorbing comments by the pianist himself.

BM



		Volumes 3 and 4 in Naxos’s fast-progressing Liszt cycle consist of the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, the six Consolations and an intriguing miscellany of short pieces (Ungarns Gott appears in both two-hand and left-hand versions). The pianist is Philip Thomson, a young Canadian – the notes are shy regarding his precise age – of immense talent. The Harmonies are ten meditations of alternating simple piety and epic grandeur inspired by Lamartine and offering the performer a daunting pianistic and imaginative challenge. Often considered uneven, the Harmonies’ lesser works surely provide a suitable context for the greater (for “Funerailles”, the “Benediction” and “Pensee des morts”) and their overall effect can be overwhelming. Understandably, the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses were among Liszt’s favourites.



		Happiest in heaven-storming exultance and bravura, Thomson reminds us that “Invocation” is not only the gateway to Liszt’s agony and ecstasy but the dawn of a wholly original pianism, setting the entire keyboard ablaze with quasi-orchestral sonorities. He allows himself a virtuoso fling or added opulence at the delirious climax of “Benediction” – a freedom that Liszt (most generous of listeners) would surely have applauded – and his massive sonority makes Liszt’s cry to the heavens, his, literally, ‘speaking’ eloquence in “Pensee des morts”, an almost palpable experience.



		Elsewhere in the Six Consolations it could be argued that Thomson allows Liszt his own voice a little too readily. His lack of idiosyncrasy is admirable yet the playing (particularly in the D flat Consolation) shows a touch of complacency, making something ordinary out of one of Liszt’s most beloved miniatures. Yet even if Thomson is hardly in the same league as Krystian Zimerman in “Funerailles”, Stephen Hough in the “Benediction”, or most of all Richter (Philips, 11/91 – nla) in The Bells of Rome – “Ave Maria” and the “Andante lagrimoso” (music which in its slow, painful climbing and harmonic ambiguity prophesies the luminous intricacy of ‘late’ Faure), his achievement is remarkable and his inclusion of Les morts, a powerful elegy in memory of Liszt’s son, Daniel, who died in his father’s arms at the age of 20, is a superb bonus. The recordings are admirable, among the finest I have heard from this source, and the notes are detailed, full of relevant quotations and with several absorbing comments by the pianist himself.