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VAI's Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies Compilation · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  Back in 1994, my goodness that was 30 years ago, Gregor Benko and Ward Marston produced
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  a two-disc release on the VAI label that featured all 19 of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies.
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  Each Rhapsody featured a different pianist and no pianist was repeated in this collection.
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  And this compilation combines historic recordings with a few modern performances that were recorded
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  especially for the collection and there are some archival live performances that are I
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  guess historic in retrospect.
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  Gregor Benko was the founder of the International Piano Library which is now the International
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  Piano Archives at the University of Maryland.
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  And Ward Marston is one of the world's most prominent conservators of old recordings and
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  he's transferred and remastered countless recordings from the 78 RPM era for various
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  labels and more recently of course for his own Marston Records label.
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  All of the performances are fascinating and riveting in different ways.
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  The first Hungarian Rhapsody which is kind of a long piece and for me it goes on a little
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  too long.
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  It's played by Alexander Borovsky this is his 1938 recording from 78s.
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  Then the famous second Hungarian Rhapsody that was played by everybody from Tom and
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  Jerry to Bugs Bunny.
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  We have this in the classic 1940 Beno Moiseyevich recording.
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  What style and command and ease and there are more than a few humorous touches to this
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  performance.
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  Now the third Rhapsody features Irv Nierachazi.
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  This pianist started out as one of the most highly scrutinized and well documented child
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  prodigies ever.
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  But his early adult career ended almost as soon as it began partly due to bad management
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  and bad luck.
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  Yet mostly due to his volatile personality, Nierachazi lived in mostly cheap hotels for
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  a lot of his adult life where he composed prolifically and he drank to excess.
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  His sexual recklessness led to numerous unsavory entanglements as well as ten marriages.
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  But his idiosyncratic and hyper romantic kind of pianism elicited serious attention for
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  a short time in the 1970s thanks to his being rediscovered by a handful of aficionados including
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  Gregor Benko.
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  And to say that Nierachazi's reading of the third Rhapsody is individual is like saying
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  that King Kong is big.
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  But all I can say is that no one would dare play the third Rhapsody in this way in a piano
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  competition nowadays.
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  The Hungarian Rhapsody number four features a live 1979 performance with Earl Wild on
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  the top of his form.
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  For Hungarian Rhapsody number five we have the 1946 Shura Cherkosky recording made on
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  78s for the Vox label.
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  The sound quality isn't great but Cherkosky had great style and he was an irrepressible
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  list player.
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  The sixth Rhapsody with its famous right hand repeated octaves that can test even the greatest
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  virtuosos is next.
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  And the producers could have chosen Vladimir Horowitz but you know there is plenty of virtuosity
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  in poetry in this 1927 recording with Misha Levitsky.
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  I'm glad they chose it for this collection actually.
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  Now the Rhapsody number seven is a piece that is relatively overlooked in relation to the
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  other Rhapsodies.
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  And for this collection we have the recording by the Leschetitsky pupil Mark Hamburg and
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  he was one of the most erratic pianists who ever recorded.
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  You never knew what you would get with him.
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  For example his recording of the sixth Rhapsody is a total mess.
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  But he did get it together for number seven and this is one of the best items in his pioneering
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  cycle devoted to the 15 Rhapsodies.
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  It wasn't until the 1960s I think that pianists started to incorporate Rhapsodies 16 through
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  19 in the Hungarian Rhapsody canon.
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  Hungarian Rhapsody number eight features a live 1973 performance with Malcolm Frager.
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  He was an absolutely marvelous pianist and unfortunately he made relatively few recordings
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  for someone of his stature and he died way too young.
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  Hungarian Rhapsody number nine honestly is not my favorite Rhapsody and I think it goes
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  on way too long for what it has to say.
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  But we have a live performance by another great pianist who died way too young, Joseph
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  Villa.
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  And he was such a fantastic list player.
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  And this performance of the ninth Rhapsody is a great example of Joseph Villa's ardent
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  identification with the list idiom and total command of it.
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  Hungarian Rhapsody number ten is next and although I probably would have picked Arthur
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  Rubinstein's late 1930s recording, I'm happy that they did pick the Guiamar Novayas recording
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  from 1962.
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  This is a very colorful and poetic rendition and it's great to hear it.
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  Now the eleventh Rhapsody, well the producer's selection didn't surprise me at all.
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  This is Alfred Courtauld's classic version on 78s from the late 1920s.
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  This is one of the best eleventh Rhapsodies ever.
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  This was a no-brainer of a selection.
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  The twelfth Rhapsody features a live 1979 performance with the George Bolet.
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  Bolet was always more inspired in front of an audience than when recording in the studio
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  and it really shows in this performance.
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  Claudio Aurao gives a full-bodied and really musicianly account of the thirteenth Rhapsody
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  and this comes from a Columbia recording session from I think 1951 or 1952, I don't remember.
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  The session encompassed five Hungarian Rhapsodies.
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  These performances remained unissued and unedited until the Desmar label and the International
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  Piano Archives brought them out on LP in the late 1970s.
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  They eventually were issued by CBS for an Aurao compilation celebrating the pianist's
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  80th birthday and of course they are part of the complete Claudio Aurao Columbia and
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  RCA recordings box set that Sony BMG brought out a few years ago, which I annotated by
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  the way.
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  Hungarian Rhapsody number fourteen was the basis for Liszt's Hungarian Fantasy for Piano
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  and Orchestra and for this collection the pianist Valery Bukrinsky recorded the fourteenth
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  Rhapsody especially for this compilation.
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  He is a wonderful pianist who is still active and playing just marvelously.
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  The Hungarian Rhapsody number fifteen is the famous Rokócsé March and one of its very
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  best recordings remains the one made in 1932 by Solomon and I'm so happy it's included
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  here.
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  Now we get to the late period Rhapsodies sixteen, seventeen and eighteen.
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  These are relatively short and they're typical of Liszt's late style.
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  There's not much really to say about these works but the performances here are with sixteen
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  you have George Cifra with Hungarian Rhapsody seventeen you have Sveta of Richter and for
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  Hungarian Rhapsody eighteen we have Lewis Kentner.
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  Hungarian Rhapsody number nineteen reverts back to the longer forms that Liszt used for
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  earlier Rhapsodies and again we have a recording here made especially for this collection by
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  a pianist whom I think is exceptional in every way and I also think she's profoundly overlooked.
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  This is Janis Weber.
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  I have been a fan of her for decades and decades.
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  So there we have it all nineteen of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies each with a different
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  pianist and mostly historic recordings and because this set came out about thirty years
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  ago I guess I would consider the two selections that were newly recorded at the time for this
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  collection maybe now in perspective we can call them historic.
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  Anyway Gregor Benko and Ward Marston did a splendid job curating this release and happily
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  this two disc set on the VAI label is still available.
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  This is Jed Disler and you've been listening to the Piano Maven your friendly podcast guide
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  to piano recordings.
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  Thank you for listening and I hope you and I will be together for the next episode.
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  Good care.