For those without any
Liszt orchestral music in their collection
this might make a good start-up disc
by virtue of the selection of works.
There are two symphonic poems including
the most well known - Les Préludes,
an orchestral arrangement of Liszt’s
most famous piano piece – the second
Hungarian Rhapsody, and one of
the two piano concertos.
Liszt, "the Great
Romantic", had such contrasting
sides to his musical personality that
some people have thought they amounted
to a form of schizophrenia. This can
be heard in the music where we can rapidly
be taken from a brooding, restrained,
ruminative lyricism to macho flamboyance;
the latter quality visually expressed
in the cartoon on the disc cover. Conductors
tend to lean more to one side than the
other, perhaps reflecting their own
personalities. Those who try to compromise
can end up with performances that fall
between two stools. I feel this is the
case with, for example, Bernard Haitink
whose recording of Les Préludes
sounds surprisingly bland. Leonard
Bernstein, as you might expect, goes
for glittering panache whereas with
Karajan we get blended beauty in the
slow romantic passages.
The Soviet-born conductor,
Vakhtang Jordania, definitely goes for
the macho approach at the expense of
brooding romanticism. The Russian Federal
Orchestra is ideally suited to this
treatment, for although they might be
a little short on beauty of string tone,
they certainly make up for it with hefty
and often exciting blasts of brass.
That said, the strings are recorded
so close here that they are in danger
of stealing the brass desks’ thunder.
There is also an emphasis on rhythm
which you do not always get in these
works. In the First Piano Concerto the
pianist, Hooshik Hwang fits in perfectly
with the style. Although he comes from
South Korea, there is something of the
ivory basher about his playing that
one associates with some Russian (or
Soviet) virtuosi. This is a man who
is at home thumping out his double octaves
and sufficiently cavalier about it that
he is not averse to the odd wrong note.
These are out-going
performances that bring out the extrovert
side of Liszt’s character and with that
proviso can certainly be enjoyed. Apart
from Les Préludes, the
recorded sound has considerable depth
and this may reflect the venue which
is the Great Hall of the Tchaikovsky
Conservatory. I rather like it but some
may find it over-reverberant, something
that particularly affects the piano
sound and tends to emphasise the bass.
Les Préludes was recorded
in Moscow’s Radio Palace Hall which
clearly has a damper acoustic.
John Leeman
Hooshik Hwang (piano) 
