Franz LISZT (1811-1886)
The Art of
Remembering
Valse oubliée no.1, S.215 [2:46]
Etudes pour le piano-forte en quarante-huit exercices dans tous les tons
majeurs et mineurs, S.136 IX. [3.15]
Petite valse favorite, S.212 [3.21]
Valse oubliée no.2, S.215 [5.54]
Etudes d'exécution transcendante, S.139 IX. Ricordanza [10.17]
Symphonie fantastique op.4 (Berlioz), S.470 IV. Marche au supplice
[5.05]
Liebesträum no.2 'Seliger tod', S.541 [3.49]
Valse oubliée no.3, S.215 [5.05]
Etudes d'exécution transcendante, S.139 VII. Eroica [4.52]; VIII.
Wilde Jagd [5.33]
Apparitions no.1, S.155 [6.40]
En rêve, nocturne, S.207 [2.09]
Valse oubliée no.4, S.215 [2.54]
Schlaflos, Frage und Antwort, S.203 [2.24]
Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch, S.206 [6.08]
Bagatelle sans tonalité, S.216 [2.17]
Fünf kleine klavierstück, S.192 V. Sospiri! [2.45]; I. [Sehr langsam]
[2.55]
Olivia Sham (pianos)
rec. 29 September 2014 (Hatchlands Park), 6-7 October 2014 (Royal Academy
of Music Museum) and 29 October 2014 (Potton Hall), UK
AVIE AV2355 [78.14]
This is the debut recording of pianist Olivia Sham, Australian-born and
now resident in London where she recently completed a doctorate at the Royal
Academy of Music. The work of Liszt, with its demands on both technique and
sensibility is a fairly typical choice for such a disc, but this is
different. “Liszt: The Art of Remembering” explores the links between the
development of the composer's music and the development of the
nineteenth-century piano. So on this disc three different instruments are
used.
Sham performs early works including
Etudes d'exécution
transcendante and the arrangement of
Marche au supplice from
Berlioz's
Symphonie fantastique on two different Parisian
Érard pianos from the 1840s, and late works such as those of tracks 12-17
(see track-listing above), all from the mid-1880s, on a modern Steinway.
Apart from that late group, successive tracks quite often switch between
different instruments so that one certainly notices the different timbre.
With any work performed here on one of the mid-century Érards, and if you
are familiar with the music only on a modern instrument, you will find the
different colours of the various keyboard registers often illuminating and
even poetic. To hear a lyrical piece such as
Ricordanza, played on
the 1845 instrument here, is to be transported into an 1850s Parisian
Salon.
Sham herself contributes a note on the instruments and Liszt’s musical
development, although it contains no specific stylistic points in relation
to any individual piece or instrument. That would have been valuable and she
would have been ideally placed to write it – she is an Honorary Research
Fellow at the RAM and performs on instruments from various historical
collections in Europe. She writes a quite unusual note on the music selected
– one unique in my experience. As a short preface explains this note mimics,
sometimes quite closely, Berlioz’s own note on his
Symphonie
Fantastique. This link to a famously dreamlike work perhaps explains
the title of the disc. It is good fun if you take the trouble to look out
the Berlioz note as well, but will seem rather odd to those who have never
seen that fantastical piece of prose. She manages to do this while also
managing to say something valuable about the music, often using Liszt’s own
remarks.
All this would be of no consequence if the playing did not do justice to
the music but it does, on all three instruments and to music from all the
periods. There is no piece that hangs fire, and several that catch fire.
That is certainly the case with two of the selections from the
transcendental studies,
Eroica and
Wild Jagd, given with
plenty of virtuoso
élan when required, but still always musical and
sensitive to the colour obtainable from the 1845 instrument. Perhaps some
passages make more sense technically on a piano with a lighter action than
the modern Steinway – certainly Olivia Sham dispatches many a stormy passage
in a way that makes them seem an integral part of the musical discourse. The
later works are played here on a modern instrument and so the recorded
competition for those is far greater. She at least holds her own in those
sometimes elusive works alongside many a better-known pianist.
Unless you are allergic to all early pianos — and there are still some
music-lovers who are thus afflicted — there is much to be gained from adding
at least one disc like this to your collection. Other very valuable -
because superbly played - discs of Liszt played on earlier instruments
include Claire Chevalier’s 2011 recital on La Dolce Volta on an 1876 Érard,
Daniel Grimwood’s 2008 complete
Années de Pèlerinage on SFZ
using an 1851 Érard, and listener in the manner of late Beethoven, drawing
us into its introspective world. It makes a fine close to this set of very
sophisticated works, which are well worth getting to know and reward
repeated close listening. The set might well be the 2011 recital of late
works (
Brilliant Classics) on Liszt’s own Bechstein. That last one would
be an especially useful supplement to Sham’s disc, as it has several of the
later works such as the four
Valses Oubliées, which she plays on a
modern piano, played on the composer’s own warm-sounding instrument.
Roy Westbrook
