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Nine Live Liszt Sonata Performances · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings. You can subscribe to the Piano Maven podcast through my sub stack page by
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  clicking on the link in the episode description. Paid subscribers get bonuses such as Piano
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  Maven Zoom meetings where we share listening experiences, share our passions and obsessions
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  and talk about different topics and meet special guests. So please consider subscribing to help
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  us reach further into the piano community and to keep this podcast in production.
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  Let's talk about live recordings. I've always had an ambivalent attitude toward the unauthorized
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  recordings where enthusiasts will sneak recording equipment into a concert without permission or
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  without the performers knowledge. Yet you have to admit that many extraordinary performances have
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  been preserved this way, performances which otherwise would have vanished into thin air.
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  My late friend Joseph Patrick recorded hundreds, maybe thousands of piano concerts this way and he
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  would happily pass on the recordings to other piano mavens. In fact, he'd pass them on to the
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  pianists who played the concerts themselves if they wanted them. Quite a few pianists, in fact,
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  were grateful that Joe was doing this because it would allow them to hear and evaluate their
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  own performances. Of course, there were some pianists who were really annoyed that Joe was
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  recording their concerts, but that's a whole other story. There've also been pianists who have made
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  arrangements with the venues where they are playing to record their concerts specifically
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  for these pianists' private use. I think the most notable example of this was Vladimir Horowitz when
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  he had arranged for the Carnegie Hall Corporation to record some of his recitals in the 1940s and
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  early 1950s for his personal use. Some of these were officially released after the pianists' death.
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  Simone Barreiro made similar arrangements or maybe it was his son Boris Barreiro who made
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  those arrangements. That's why some of the Simone Barreiro Carnegie Hall concerts from the 1940s
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  were recorded. George Bolette actually encouraged private tapers to sneak in their equipment
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  and record his concerts because I think he knew more than anyone that he himself played much better
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  in front of audiences than in the studio. Certainly, he was often much more inspired in concert than he
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  was in front of a studio microphone. So I thought for this episode we could take a major work like
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  the Franz Liszt Sonata in B minor and discuss nine live performances that stem from private recordings,
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  some of which appeared in the so-called underground and then some that started that way but eventually
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  turned up on legitimate releases. And as you would expect, the sound quality is usually variable,
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  but in most cases it's pretty easy for the ear to make adjustments. Now these nine Liszt Sonata
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  recordings I'm going to talk about should not be your primary recordings simply for sonic reasons,
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  and for those of you who are coming to the Liszt Sonata for the first time, you're going to want
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  a combination of great performance and professional engineering. But once you've gotten to know this
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  piece, then you have the work imprinted in your mind, and with that it becomes easier to embrace
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  these particular live recordings more readily to get past sonic issues and performance inaccuracies
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  and things like that. And this is a composition where performance is really everything. In order
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  to bring out the virtuosic flair as well as the thematic unity binding each continuous section,
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  one has to think about this music in terms of being on stage and projecting it across the
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  footlights. I think that's really the essential nature of the Liszt Sonata. So let's begin with
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  the pianist Simone Boréer, who played the Liszt Sonata at Carnegie Hall on November 11, 1947.
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  This performance was first issued on the Remington label after the pianist's death in 1951,
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  and it appeared on LP again in the mid-70s in the Vox Labels historic series, and then it turned up
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  on CD as part of the APR Labels series devoted to Simone Boréer's Carnegie Hall concerts that
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  all survived in sound. This is truly personalized playing, sometimes even self-indulgent, but
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  in a positive way with all kinds of stretched out robatos and filled in textures. This interpretation
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  is very improvisatory, yet it somehow hangs together and you really feel swept up in the
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  moment as you listen. Not every pianist was able to convey a sense of playing in the present,
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  but Simone Boréer definitely does. Although Claudio Arau made what I consider to be one of
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  the reference studio recordings of the Liszt Sonata, some of his live performances were even more
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  incendiary and daring, and several of them have been released on CD. But one in particular stands
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  out to me, and this one comes from a 1977 concert in Toronto that was issued on the Marston label
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  on a release called Liszt Illuminated. Arau is 74 years old at the time of this performance,
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  but he sounds like a youngster. Just the fugetta itself and its unrelenting buildup,
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  and the lyrical passages are stretched to their rhetorical limits in a way that probably Arau
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  would not have allowed himself to do in the studio. But these gestures never lapse into vulgarity,
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  and it's a really compelling performance that I think you ought to hear. George Bolette,
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  who I mentioned before, was another aristocratic interpreter of the Liszt Sonata, as his two studio
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  recordings of the piece abundantly prove. But if you can get past the rather average fidelity
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  in sonics of an audience recording made at his February 5th, 1972 recital in New York City's
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  Alice Tully Hall, you're going to hear a more demonic and daring and poetic
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  interpretation of the Liszt Sonata from George Bolette than in his recordings. And you don't
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  even notice the brilliance and flexibility of his technique, because musically it's all of a piece,
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  but he is on staggering form. And this Liszt Sonata performance was released on the AS Disc
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  label on CD, if you can find it. As I said before, George Bolette was definitely a pianist who played
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  totally differently in front of an audience than in front of studio microphones. Another wonderful
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  Liszt Sonata from 1972 features a pianist primarily known as a teacher, but as a pianist,
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  he could play just about anything. And I've spoken about this pianist on this podcast before.
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  Howard Karp. He lived from 1929 until 2014. And when he retired from teaching in the year 2000,
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  a two CD set was released containing some really fantastic live performances.
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  And although he's more modern a Liszt interpreter, stylistically speaking, compared to
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  Aurao and Bolette and Barrère, the sweep of his Liszt Sonata and the bigness of his conception
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  and the generosity of sound and spirit all come through this performance. He really does take you
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  on a journey. There's a wonderful live Liszt Sonata with Sviatoslav Richter. I think it's one
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  of his most inspired performances surviving of this work. It was given at Carnegie Hall
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  on May 18th, 1965. And that was just one week after Vladimir Horowitz made his historic return
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  on May 9th. Now this performance of the Liszt Sonata, I think may even be more colorful and
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  dramatic and luminous than some of Richter's other Liszt Sonata performances. The source recording
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  for this performance, I suspect, comes from an audience tape. It first turned up on a bootleg LP.
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  But then I remember that Phillips released a recording of Richter playing the Liszt Sonata
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  on its short-lived legendary Classics Reissue series. And the only information that Phillips
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  provided was that this Liszt Sonata was a live recording from Budapest in 1960. And I remember
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  when I got hold of this CD years ago, immediately I became suspicious because simply the audience
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  coughs and the quiet opening occurred in exactly the same place as that bootleg LP that I had of
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  the 1965 Carnegie performance. It was identical to what I heard on the Phillips CD. So I checked
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  further and indeed this Phillips CD had the 1965 Carnegie Hall performance, not a spurious 1960
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  Budapest performance. In fact, Richter never played the Liszt Sonata in 1960, so far as I know.
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  And actually some years later, the Pellexa label issued this performance in what I understand
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  is a slightly better transfer than on the Phillips disc. But that Pellexa CD has long been out of
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  print and you can find it for around $140 on Amazon.com. It's also been released on the Saint
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  Laurent Studio label and on the Talents of Russia label. I haven't heard any of these transfers,
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  so I only have in my collection that Phillips disc and I have the original bootleg LP, which I think
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  sounds a little bit better, but I really can't report any further on which transfer of this
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  Carnegie Hall Richter Liszt Sonata is the best one. But it is a performance that all piano mavens
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  should hear. Now I'd like to talk about the Hungarian pianist Irén Márek. She lived from
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  1905 until 1986. I first discovered her through a remarkable all Liszt LP recorded in the 1950s for
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  the Draco label. And my late friend Alan Evans, whose name always pops up on this podcast,
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  he turned me on to this disc and I actually found a copy of it in the same junk shop where Alan
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  found his copy of this disc. And being the piano archaeologist that he was, Alan went so far as to
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  track Irén Márek down at her home in Independence, California near Death Valley, where she had lived
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  for years and where she gave concerts from her home. And she continued making recordings every
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  now and then. She would record her practice sessions also, and she did not want these practice
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  session tapes to circulate. So after her death, one of her close friends gave these tapes that
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  she had preserved to Alan. And among these tapes was an uninterrupted run through of the Liszt Sonata
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  recorded on July 24th, 1975. And it's a real performance. It's not note perfect, but it is a
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  real living performance that's set out in shapely and colorful paragraphs. It's full of startling
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  accentuations and beautiful transitions. There is so much to savor here, and you can tell that
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  she is a seasoned Liszt interpreter, and I really enjoyed listening to this. For many years, a less
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  than high fidelity recording made at a concert in France in 1973 circulated among several collectors
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  who were devoted to the pianist on this performance, Cyprien Katsaris, playing the Liszt Sonata. And I
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  had heard about this recording for years from the pianist's friend Francis Romano, but I had never
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  actually heard it until Cyprien Katsaris himself released it on his own Piano 21 label as part of
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  a double album devoted to works of Liszt. Cyprien's performance is a throwback to the kind of
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  old school Liszt Sonata we get from Simon Barer or in that old Alfred Courtauld recording perhaps.
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  But the audacity of his conception and how Katsaris in his early 20s projects such confidence and as
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  well as sincerity, you never question at all that the young Cyprien Katsaris expresses the courage of
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  his convictions as he still does to this day. And this is a Liszt Sonata that's all of one piece and
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  it just begs for you to pay attention in every bar. Once you hear it, you'll never forget it and
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  you know you get used to the sound as you're listening to it and I'm very happy that he did
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  sanction its release finally. There's also a marvelous live Liszt Sonata performed by Terrence
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  Judd recorded during the final rounds of the 1978 Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow
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  where this highly talented British pianist only placed fourth. But this is a Liszt Sonata full of
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  poise and drama and character in every moment and who cares about the occasional drop notes? I mean
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  this is a compelling performance and it's a precious souvenir of a brilliant pianist who would
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  take his own life in 1979 only months after his 22nd birthday. When you listen to playing on this
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  level one can only imagine what might have been because there's no question that Terrence Judd was
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  a major talent and he was pretty much fully formed artistically speaking. However, if it had not been
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  for at least one audience member who snuck a recording device into Carnegie Hall we would
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  not have one of the most exciting and dramatic and daring and poetic and characterful Liszt Sonata
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  performances in existence and this features Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz had started to bring
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  back the Liszt Sonata into his repertoire in 1976 when he played it at Powell Hall in St. Louis
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  and this performance as well as the rehearsals were recorded by RCA Victor for commercial release
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  and it was issued in 1977 in edited form in anticipation of Horowitz's golden jubilee season
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  in 1978. And as you can tell in the St. Louis performance both in the edited recording and in
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  the unedited concert performance he had not totally assimilated the work. I mean there are
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  wonderful wonderful moments of course but there also are some hesitancies and some awkward
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  phrasings that would sort themselves out in further performances. I don't think that Horowitz had played
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  the Liszt Sonata in public since 1949 so far as I know and for a 73 year old pianist to reacquire
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  such demanding repertoire is no small task even if he is Vladimir Horowitz. But as I said during
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  the 1977 and 78 season Horowitz did perform the sonata more and more and he gradually got it all
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  back into his fingers and his spirit. So by the time of his March 1978 Carnegie Hall performances
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  everything was there. He played the Liszt Sonata on March 12th at Carnegie Hall the week before
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  but it is the March 19th performance that really catches fire. Now I can understand why RCA Victor
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  did not record the concert for the simple reason that there already was Horowitz's new official
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  recording on the market but I only wish in retrospect that a professional recording had
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  been made because this March 19th 1978 Liszt Sonata is head and shoulders above either the edited
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  1976 Powell Hall recording or the unedited version that Sony BMG eventually released in a box set.
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  And by the way Joe Patrick who I talked about earlier worked very hard trying to remaster that
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  Carnegie Hall March 19th audience tape to make it releasable and he did a pretty good job of it
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  although in the end it sonically didn't quite pass muster for Sony BMG to bring it out.
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  Now you can find various transfers of this performance floating around the internet
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  and I think it's pretty easy to listen past the sonic problems because Horowitz's personality
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  still comes through and it's precisely because of performances like this that hardcore piano mavens
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  seek out live recordings authorized or otherwise and as I said earlier even George Bolette encouraged
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  live taping because he knew that studio recordings did not capture his artistry at its best. The only
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  thing with this Horowitz March 19th performance is that some of the transfers that have been
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  floating out there are not properly pitched they're a little bit sharp so you have to
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  really do some deep research. So if you are a Liszt Sonata aficionado you might enjoy hunting
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  down these nine live and unedited performances featuring Simone Barreiro, Claudio Arau, George
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  Bolette, Howard Karp, Sviatoslav Richter, Ireen Marek, Cyprien Katsaris, Terence Judd, and Vladimir
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  Horowitz. At a certain point I should do a podcast episode where I talk about commercial
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  recordings of the Liszt Sonata. Maybe I'll do two of them. How about an episode that's based on what
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  the critical consensus has been for the Liszt Sonata on record and then I'll do an episode
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  about worthy Liszt Sonata commercial recordings by pianists who may be lesser known yet who still
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  gave us marvelous interpretations that all piano mavens should try to hear. This is Jed Dissler
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  and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  Thank you so much for being with me and I look forward to us being together for the next episode.
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  Take good care.