{"product_id":"liszt-the-complete-annzes-de-p-lerinage","title":"Liszt: The Complete Années de pèlerinage","description":"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eLISZT \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eAnnées de pèlerinage \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"BULLET12\"\u003e • \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Louis Lortie (pn) \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"BULLET12\"\u003e • \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e CHANDOS 10662 (2 CDs: 161:20) \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eThere’s been no dearth of \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnées de pèlerinage \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003erecordings over the past year or so. Predictably, they range from the compelling (Libor Novacek, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnées \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eI and II, Landor 290 and 278; André Laplante, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnées \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eI, Analekta 29980), to the less good (Michael Korstick, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnées\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e I and II, cpo 777478 and 777585), to the deeply disappointing (Jerome Lowenthal, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnées \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003ecomplete, Bridge 9307). The new, complete\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003e Années de pèlerinage \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eof Louis Lortie, however, is in a class all its own. He approaches this summit of romanticism steeped in the music of Liszt (his recording of all the works for piano and orchestra, Chandos 10371, a collaboration during 1999–2000 with George Pehlivanian and the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, is one of the finest). Lortie is a richly imaginative musician and a pianist of cultured refinement whose interpretations invariably tend toward understatement. These 26 pieces occupied Liszt for some 46 years and, along with the Sonata, are emblematic of his achievement as a piano composer. You get the sense that Lortie has long lived with the entire cycle, coming to know (and love) each of its components equally well. Add to this his unstinting identification with Liszt’s poetic message, and you have all the elements required for an \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnées de pèlerinage \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eof tremendous freshness and originality. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eAmid the Alpine landscapes of Book I, the Swiss Year, Lortie conjures uncluttered vistas and pristine atmosphere with unhurried tempos that give each phrase plenty of breathing room. The mini-triptych within the cycle, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAu lac de Wallenstadt, Pastorale, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eand \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAu Bord d’une source,\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e is painted in luminous colors, highlighted here and there with an exquisitely inflected \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003etempo rubato\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e. When the bucolic idyll is shattered by \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eOrage, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eLortie lets loose this implacable force of nature with phrasing that is so deftly shaped, pedaling so restrained, and dynamics so infinitely calibrated that each gust and cascading torrent seems audible. \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eVallée d’Obermann\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, the centerpiece of the Swiss Year, has been, at least in recent decades, the most frequently excerpted piece from the cycle. Divorced from context, and in spite of its formal interest, the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eVallée \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003ehas come to typify the 19th-century set piece, more creaking and tear-stained with each iteration. Lortie will have none of that. In a performance both masculine and heartfelt, we sense Obermann’s struggle toward spiritual rejuvenation through the majesty of nature. In place of a sob sister, we have a psychological drama, a genuine pilgrimage, at once gripping and imminently credible, that restores the dignity and stature of this wonderful piece. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eBook II, the first of the two Italian Years, demonstrates Lortie’s success in both the scintillatingly intimate miniature and the implacable grandeur of the epic. The chaste refinement of color and line in Raphael’s Milan altarpiece are evoked in an ecstatic reading of \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eSposalizio. \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eThe three\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003e Sonnetti del Petrarca \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eprovide an interesting case of how the over-exposed can be imbued with new luster and meaning. Lortie achieves this with an unambiguous directness and simplicity of utterance. It is as though we hear Petrarch’s poems declaimed. The \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003efioritura\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e cadenzas emerge organically from the text, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003ea piacere, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eeach note beautifully articulated and perfectly suited to context. Moreover, the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eSonnetti \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eexemplify Lortie’s characteristic phrasing, always delineated by what can be maintained with human breath. The culmination of Book II,\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003e Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, known as the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eDante Sonata\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, is the longest piece of the entire cycle and far away the most technically challenging. The stentorian introduction draws on an unusually varied dynamic palette to set the stage for the drama that will unfold. In the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003ePresto agitato assai\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, evoking the whirlwinds of the Inferno, Lortie maintains extraordinarily extended \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003ecrescendi\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e and \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003edecresecendi\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, drawing on an infinitely calibrated dynamic control and acute rhythmical inflection. Later, in the transition between the second statement of the redemption motif and the return to the infernal maelstrom, he uses the strategy again with stunning results. Over the course of a minute and 20 seconds, and through 22 note-filled measures covering more than two pages in the score, Lortie builds one long, seamless \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003ecrescendo\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e of overwhelming magnitude. At the return of the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003etremolando\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e redemption motif in the piano’s upper registers, it sounds like shimmering violins. The final apotheosis seems a blaze of light, though here, as throughout the piece, there is no hint of overplaying or empty bombast. It might be added that in the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eDante Sonata, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eand in pieces like the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eChappelle de Guillaume Tell \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003efrom Book I and Book III’s \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eSunt lacrymae rerum, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003ewhere Liszt exploits the piano’s lowest register, it sounds as though the bottom-octave strings of Lortie’s Fazioli grand are a quarter mile long. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eBut the most remarkable feature of this outstanding recording is the third \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnée\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e. Its seven pieces represent a distillation of Liszt’s late style and inhabit psychological realms seldom traversed by other 19th-century composers. A number of pianists who recorded the first two books simply don’t venture into the third, and those who have seem confounded sooner or later. Lortie, on the other hand, has plumbed the depths of these strange yet deeply artistic creations, developing interpretations that are remarkable in sharpness of focus and clarity of expression. The best-known of the set, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eLes Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este,\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e combines the utmost delicacy and refinement with a disarming simplicity. Phrases are sculpted with unerring proportion and contour. The villa’s hundred fountains sparkle and splash in a virtuoso display of exquisitely understated pianistic finesse. Nor are the implications of Liszt’s Biblical reference to the waters of everlasting life neglected; a sense of ecstatic spirituality pervades the whole as though it were a sacrament in sound. Musically speaking, the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eMarche funèbre\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e for the Emperor Maximillian, with its dark impasto and difficult transitions, is one of the most challenging pieces in the set. But what has remained a puzzle in many otherwise creditable performances of the third \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnée \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eis compellingly deciphered by Lortie. Liszt’s idiosyncratic rhetoric is rendered comprehensible, including the problematic \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003efortissimo trionfante\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e in F?-Major that in so many other readings simply falls flat. Book III opens with \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAngelus\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, a prayer to the guardian angels, and closes with \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eSursum corda\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, “lift up your hearts,” a reference to the preface to the canon of the Mass. The blend of intuition, intellect, and philosophical insight Lortie brings to \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eSursum corda\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, with its prismatic harmonies undulating over the fixed anchor of a pedal point on E, creates a mighty culmination of the cycle. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eOn this recording, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eVenezia e Napoli\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, the supplement to Book II, is placed at the end of the recording, following the stylistically distant third \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnée\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e. It is an interesting choice, which casts \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eVenezia e Napoli\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e as a sort of encore to the entire cycle, bringing us back to earth after the lofty metaphysics of Book III. Incidentally, the \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eTarantella \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eis fierce. The recording was made during three days last November at Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, and the Chandos engineers captured the sound of Lortie’s Fazioli grand brilliantly. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eThis \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAnnées de pèlerinage \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003eis unquestionably one of the finest releases thus far during the Liszt bicentennial. Time will tell, but it also may be the finest recording of the work to date. Not to be missed. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan style=\"font-weight:bold\"\u003eFANFARE: Patrick Rucker \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e -------\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Louis Lortie's survey of the complete Années de Pèlerinage adds up to his finest Liszt playing on disc. The interpretations abound with new-found reserves of virtuosic flair and poetic sensitivity. You hear both of these qualities in the opening piece, La chapelle de Guillaume Tell, where Lortie varies the murmuring tremolo chords with subtle nuances yet doesn't hold back in the climactic Allegro vivace. You hear similar textural variety and heightened drama throughout Aux cypres de la Villa d'Este II.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In both Orage and the Dante sonata Lortie's superb technique enables him to articulate the long stretches of octaves in shapely legato lines that are executed with minimum pedal. This similarly applies to the ferocity and momentum Lortie generates in Vallée d'Obermann's peroration. Whereas pianists like Claudio Arrau and Muza Rubackyté take their time to savor Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este's jet-spray arpeggiated figures, Lortie's comparable accuracy and finesse reveals them in a lighter, more playful manifestation. Lortie's well-judged tempo relationships create unity and momentum in Venezia e Napoli's Tarantella, but I prefer Marc-André Hamelin's almost offhanded panache and astounding repeated-note technique. While Chandos' slightly diffuse and distant sonics don't match Rubackyté's Lyrinx release for detail and warmth, they do reflect Lortie's robust sonority as one might experience it in a small concert hall. Strongly recommended.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Chandos","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":49710326087960,"sku":"095115166222","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0687\/4346\/3192\/files\/1813476_707fca74-0c4b-433e-b9c8-dd1c1bb5840e.jpg?v=1777816015","url":"https:\/\/hbdirect.com\/products\/liszt-the-complete-annzes-de-p-lerinage","provider":"HBDirect","version":"1.0","type":"link"}