The German pianist Ulrich Urban presents a CD of the long neglected, and possibly unrecorded until now, fantasies on all five operas of the German composer Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949). An exact contemporary of Richard Strauss, he is not usually associated with glittering virtuoso transcriptions for his art is much too intimate, too lyrical, and even austere in character. But a number of piano arrangers, all of them Pfitzner contemporaries, succeeded in skillfully combining themes and tunes from his operas, bringing out the best of these late romantic masterpieces of 20th c. opera.
