February 27, 2025 • 21 mins
Jed discusses nine live and unedited performances of Liszt's monumental Piano Sonata in B Minor. Pianists include Simon Barere, Jorge Bolet, Claudio Arrau, Howard Karp, Sviatoslav Richter, Irén Marik, Cyprien Katsaris, Terence Judd and Vladimir Horowitz.
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Here are some links to some of the performances mentioned in this episode:
Vladimir Horowitz Carnegie Hall Recital March 19th 1978 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfkAkMoQ6QU
Howard Karp Liszt Sonata - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96zA4CgJuos
Simon Barere Liszt Sonata (excerpt) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZLn3i-eQi0
Cyyprien Katsaris Liszt Sonata - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgNytL777Pk
Terence Judd Liszt Sonata (excerpt) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8uHB_hO73k
Iren Marik Liszt Sonata - https://www.amazon.com/Iren-Marik-Mozart-Messiaen/dp/B000PSJCDS
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
(00:14):
recordings. You can subscribe to the Piano Maven podcast through my sub stack page by
clicking on the link in the episode description. Paid subscribers get bonuses such as Piano
Maven Zoom meetings where we share listening experiences, share our passions and obsessions
(00:34):
and talk about different topics and meet special guests. So please consider subscribing to help
us reach further into the piano community and to keep this podcast in production.
Let's talk about live recordings. I've always had an ambivalent attitude toward the unauthorized
(00:56):
recordings where enthusiasts will sneak recording equipment into a concert without permission or
without the performers knowledge. Yet you have to admit that many extraordinary performances have
been preserved this way, performances which otherwise would have vanished into thin air.
(01:16):
My late friend Joseph Patrick recorded hundreds, maybe thousands of piano concerts this way and he
would happily pass on the recordings to other piano mavens. In fact, he'd pass them on to the
pianists who played the concerts themselves if they wanted them. Quite a few pianists, in fact,
(01:37):
were grateful that Joe was doing this because it would allow them to hear and evaluate their
own performances. Of course, there were some pianists who were really annoyed that Joe was
recording their concerts, but that's a whole other story. There've also been pianists who have made
arrangements with the venues where they are playing to record their concerts specifically
(02:02):
for these pianists' private use. I think the most notable example of this was Vladimir Horowitz when
he had arranged for the Carnegie Hall Corporation to record some of his recitals in the 1940s and
early 1950s for his personal use. Some of these were officially released after the pianists' death.
(02:26):
Simone Barreiro made similar arrangements or maybe it was his son Boris Barreiro who made
those arrangements. That's why some of the Simone Barreiro Carnegie Hall concerts from the 1940s
were recorded. George Bolette actually encouraged private tapers to sneak in their equipment
(02:48):
and record his concerts because I think he knew more than anyone that he himself played much better
in front of audiences than in the studio. Certainly, he was often much more inspired in concert than he
was in front of a studio microphone. So I thought for this episode we could take a major work like
(03:10):
the Franz Liszt Sonata in B minor and discuss nine live performances that stem from private recordings,
some of which appeared in the so-called underground and then some that started that way but eventually
turned up on legitimate releases. And as you would expect, the sound quality is usually variable,
(03:35):
but in most cases it's pretty easy for the ear to make adjustments. Now these nine Liszt Sonata
recordings I'm going to talk about should not be your primary recordings simply for sonic reasons,
and for those of you who are coming to the Liszt Sonata for the first time, you're going to want
(03:56):
a combination of great performance and professional engineering. But once you've gotten to know this
piece, then you have the work imprinted in your mind, and with that it becomes easier to embrace
these particular live recordings more readily to get past sonic issues and performance inaccuracies
(04:20):
and things like that. And this is a composition where performance is really everything. In order
to bring out the virtuosic flair as well as the thematic unity binding each continuous section,
one has to think about this music in terms of being on stage and projecting it across the
(04:42):
footlights. I think that's really the essential nature of the Liszt Sonata. So let's begin with
the pianist Simone Boréer, who played the Liszt Sonata at Carnegie Hall on November 11, 1947.
This performance was first issued on the Remington label after the pianist's death in 1951,
(05:07):
and it appeared on LP again in the mid-70s in the Vox Labels historic series, and then it turned up
on CD as part of the APR Labels series devoted to Simone Boréer's Carnegie Hall concerts that
all survived in sound. This is truly personalized playing, sometimes even self-indulgent, but
(05:33):
in a positive way with all kinds of stretched out robatos and filled in textures. This interpretation
is very improvisatory, yet it somehow hangs together and you really feel swept up in the
moment as you listen. Not every pianist was able to convey a sense of playing in the present,
(05:55):
but Simone Boréer definitely does. Although Claudio Arau made what I consider to be one of
the reference studio recordings of the Liszt Sonata, some of his live performances were even more
incendiary and daring, and several of them have been released on CD. But one in particular stands
(06:19):
out to me, and this one comes from a 1977 concert in Toronto that was issued on the Marston label
on a release called Liszt Illuminated. Arau is 74 years old at the time of this performance,
but he sounds like a youngster. Just the fugetta itself and its unrelenting buildup,
(06:42):
and the lyrical passages are stretched to their rhetorical limits in a way that probably Arau
would not have allowed himself to do in the studio. But these gestures never lapse into vulgarity,
and it's a really compelling performance that I think you ought to hear. George Bolette,
(07:03):
who I mentioned before, was another aristocratic interpreter of the Liszt Sonata, as his two studio
recordings of the piece abundantly prove. But if you can get past the rather average fidelity
in sonics of an audience recording made at his February 5th, 1972 recital in New York City's
(07:31):
Alice Tully Hall, you're going to hear a more demonic and daring and poetic
interpretation of the Liszt Sonata from George Bolette than in his recordings. And you don't
even notice the brilliance and flexibility of his technique, because musically it's all of a piece,
(07:52):
but he is on staggering form. And this Liszt Sonata performance was released on the AS Disc
label on CD, if you can find it. As I said before, George Bolette was definitely a pianist who played
totally differently in front of an audience than in front of studio microphones. Another wonderful
(08:15):
Liszt Sonata from 1972 features a pianist primarily known as a teacher, but as a pianist,
he could play just about anything. And I've spoken about this pianist on this podcast before.
Howard Karp. He lived from 1929 until 2014. And when he retired from teaching in the year 2000,
(08:39):
a two CD set was released containing some really fantastic live performances.
And although he's more modern a Liszt interpreter, stylistically speaking, compared to
Aurao and Bolette and Barrère, the sweep of his Liszt Sonata and the bigness of his conception
(09:02):
and the generosity of sound and spirit all come through this performance. He really does take you
on a journey. There's a wonderful live Liszt Sonata with Sviatoslav Richter. I think it's one
of his most inspired performances surviving of this work. It was given at Carnegie Hall
(09:23):
on May 18th, 1965. And that was just one week after Vladimir Horowitz made his historic return
on May 9th. Now this performance of the Liszt Sonata, I think may even be more colorful and
dramatic and luminous than some of Richter's other Liszt Sonata performances. The source recording
(09:47):
for this performance, I suspect, comes from an audience tape. It first turned up on a bootleg LP.
But then I remember that Phillips released a recording of Richter playing the Liszt Sonata
on its short-lived legendary Classics Reissue series. And the only information that Phillips
(10:10):
provided was that this Liszt Sonata was a live recording from Budapest in 1960. And I remember
when I got hold of this CD years ago, immediately I became suspicious because simply the audience
coughs and the quiet opening occurred in exactly the same place as that bootleg LP that I had of
(10:34):
the 1965 Carnegie performance. It was identical to what I heard on the Phillips CD. So I checked
further and indeed this Phillips CD had the 1965 Carnegie Hall performance, not a spurious 1960
Budapest performance. In fact, Richter never played the Liszt Sonata in 1960, so far as I know.
(10:59):
And actually some years later, the Pellexa label issued this performance in what I understand
is a slightly better transfer than on the Phillips disc. But that Pellexa CD has long been out of
print and you can find it for around $140 on Amazon.com. It's also been released on the Saint
(11:23):
Laurent Studio label and on the Talents of Russia label. I haven't heard any of these transfers,
so I only have in my collection that Phillips disc and I have the original bootleg LP, which I think
sounds a little bit better, but I really can't report any further on which transfer of this
(11:46):
Carnegie Hall Richter Liszt Sonata is the best one. But it is a performance that all piano mavens
should hear. Now I'd like to talk about the Hungarian pianist Irén Márek. She lived from
1905 until 1986. I first discovered her through a remarkable all Liszt LP recorded in the 1950s for
(12:09):
the Draco label. And my late friend Alan Evans, whose name always pops up on this podcast,
he turned me on to this disc and I actually found a copy of it in the same junk shop where Alan
found his copy of this disc. And being the piano archaeologist that he was, Alan went so far as to
(12:33):
track Irén Márek down at her home in Independence, California near Death Valley, where she had lived
for years and where she gave concerts from her home. And she continued making recordings every
now and then. She would record her practice sessions also, and she did not want these practice
session tapes to circulate. So after her death, one of her close friends gave these tapes that
(13:01):
she had preserved to Alan. And among these tapes was an uninterrupted run through of the Liszt Sonata
recorded on July 24th, 1975. And it's a real performance. It's not note perfect, but it is a
real living performance that's set out in shapely and colorful paragraphs. It's full of startling
(13:27):
accentuations and beautiful transitions. There is so much to savor here, and you can tell that
she is a seasoned Liszt interpreter, and I really enjoyed listening to this. For many years, a less
than high fidelity recording made at a concert in France in 1973 circulated among several collectors
(13:51):
who were devoted to the pianist on this performance, Cyprien Katsaris, playing the Liszt Sonata. And I
had heard about this recording for years from the pianist's friend Francis Romano, but I had never
actually heard it until Cyprien Katsaris himself released it on his own Piano 21 label as part of
(14:16):
a double album devoted to works of Liszt. Cyprien's performance is a throwback to the kind of
old school Liszt Sonata we get from Simon Barer or in that old Alfred Courtauld recording perhaps.
But the audacity of his conception and how Katsaris in his early 20s projects such confidence and as
(14:41):
well as sincerity, you never question at all that the young Cyprien Katsaris expresses the courage of
his convictions as he still does to this day. And this is a Liszt Sonata that's all of one piece and
it just begs for you to pay attention in every bar. Once you hear it, you'll never forget it and
(15:04):
you know you get used to the sound as you're listening to it and I'm very happy that he did
sanction its release finally. There's also a marvelous live Liszt Sonata performed by Terrence
Judd recorded during the final rounds of the 1978 Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow
(15:26):
where this highly talented British pianist only placed fourth. But this is a Liszt Sonata full of
poise and drama and character in every moment and who cares about the occasional drop notes? I mean
this is a compelling performance and it's a precious souvenir of a brilliant pianist who would
(15:46):
take his own life in 1979 only months after his 22nd birthday. When you listen to playing on this
level one can only imagine what might have been because there's no question that Terrence Judd was
a major talent and he was pretty much fully formed artistically speaking. However, if it had not been
(16:13):
for at least one audience member who snuck a recording device into Carnegie Hall we would
not have one of the most exciting and dramatic and daring and poetic and characterful Liszt Sonata
performances in existence and this features Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz had started to bring
(16:39):
back the Liszt Sonata into his repertoire in 1976 when he played it at Powell Hall in St. Louis
and this performance as well as the rehearsals were recorded by RCA Victor for commercial release
and it was issued in 1977 in edited form in anticipation of Horowitz's golden jubilee season
(17:04):
in 1978. And as you can tell in the St. Louis performance both in the edited recording and in
the unedited concert performance he had not totally assimilated the work. I mean there are
wonderful wonderful moments of course but there also are some hesitancies and some awkward
(17:26):
phrasings that would sort themselves out in further performances. I don't think that Horowitz had played
the Liszt Sonata in public since 1949 so far as I know and for a 73 year old pianist to reacquire
such demanding repertoire is no small task even if he is Vladimir Horowitz. But as I said during
(17:50):
the 1977 and 78 season Horowitz did perform the sonata more and more and he gradually got it all
back into his fingers and his spirit. So by the time of his March 1978 Carnegie Hall performances
everything was there. He played the Liszt Sonata on March 12th at Carnegie Hall the week before
(18:16):
but it is the March 19th performance that really catches fire. Now I can understand why RCA Victor
did not record the concert for the simple reason that there already was Horowitz's new official
recording on the market but I only wish in retrospect that a professional recording had
(18:38):
been made because this March 19th 1978 Liszt Sonata is head and shoulders above either the edited
1976 Powell Hall recording or the unedited version that Sony BMG eventually released in a box set.
And by the way Joe Patrick who I talked about earlier worked very hard trying to remaster that
(19:06):
Carnegie Hall March 19th audience tape to make it releasable and he did a pretty good job of it
although in the end it sonically didn't quite pass muster for Sony BMG to bring it out.
Now you can find various transfers of this performance floating around the internet
(19:29):
and I think it's pretty easy to listen past the sonic problems because Horowitz's personality
still comes through and it's precisely because of performances like this that hardcore piano mavens
seek out live recordings authorized or otherwise and as I said earlier even George Bolette encouraged
(19:51):
live taping because he knew that studio recordings did not capture his artistry at its best. The only
thing with this Horowitz March 19th performance is that some of the transfers that have been
floating out there are not properly pitched they're a little bit sharp so you have to
really do some deep research. So if you are a Liszt Sonata aficionado you might enjoy hunting
(20:18):
down these nine live and unedited performances featuring Simone Barreiro, Claudio Arau, George
Bolette, Howard Karp, Sviatoslav Richter, Ireen Marek, Cyprien Katsaris, Terence Judd, and Vladimir
Horowitz. At a certain point I should do a podcast episode where I talk about commercial
(20:42):
recordings of the Liszt Sonata. Maybe I'll do two of them. How about an episode that's based on what
the critical consensus has been for the Liszt Sonata on record and then I'll do an episode
about worthy Liszt Sonata commercial recordings by pianists who may be lesser known yet who still
gave us marvelous interpretations that all piano mavens should try to hear. This is Jed Dissler
(21:09):
and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
Thank you so much for being with me and I look forward to us being together for the next episode.
Take good care.
This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
(00:14):
recordings. You can subscribe to the Piano Maven podcast through my sub stack page by
clicking on the link in the episode description. Paid subscribers get bonuses such as Piano
Maven Zoom meetings where we share listening experiences, share our passions and obsessions
(00:34):
and talk about different topics and meet special guests. So please consider subscribing to help
us reach further into the piano community and to keep this podcast in production.
Let's talk about live recordings. I've always had an ambivalent attitude toward the unauthorized
(00:56):
recordings where enthusiasts will sneak recording equipment into a concert without permission or
without the performers knowledge. Yet you have to admit that many extraordinary performances have
been preserved this way, performances which otherwise would have vanished into thin air.
(01:16):
My late friend Joseph Patrick recorded hundreds, maybe thousands of piano concerts this way and he
would happily pass on the recordings to other piano mavens. In fact, he'd pass them on to the
pianists who played the concerts themselves if they wanted them. Quite a few pianists, in fact,
(01:37):
were grateful that Joe was doing this because it would allow them to hear and evaluate their
own performances. Of course, there were some pianists who were really annoyed that Joe was
recording their concerts, but that's a whole other story. There've also been pianists who have made
arrangements with the venues where they are playing to record their concerts specifically
(02:02):
for these pianists' private use. I think the most notable example of this was Vladimir Horowitz when
he had arranged for the Carnegie Hall Corporation to record some of his recitals in the 1940s and
early 1950s for his personal use. Some of these were officially released after the pianists' death.
(02:26):
Simone Barreiro made similar arrangements or maybe it was his son Boris Barreiro who made
those arrangements. That's why some of the Simone Barreiro Carnegie Hall concerts from the 1940s
were recorded. George Bolette actually encouraged private tapers to sneak in their equipment
(02:48):
and record his concerts because I think he knew more than anyone that he himself played much better
in front of audiences than in the studio. Certainly, he was often much more inspired in concert than he
was in front of a studio microphone. So I thought for this episode we could take a major work like
(03:10):
the Franz Liszt Sonata in B minor and discuss nine live performances that stem from private recordings,
some of which appeared in the so-called underground and then some that started that way but eventually
turned up on legitimate releases. And as you would expect, the sound quality is usually variable,
(03:35):
but in most cases it's pretty easy for the ear to make adjustments. Now these nine Liszt Sonata
recordings I'm going to talk about should not be your primary recordings simply for sonic reasons,
and for those of you who are coming to the Liszt Sonata for the first time, you're going to want
(03:56):
a combination of great performance and professional engineering. But once you've gotten to know this
piece, then you have the work imprinted in your mind, and with that it becomes easier to embrace
these particular live recordings more readily to get past sonic issues and performance inaccuracies
(04:20):
and things like that. And this is a composition where performance is really everything. In order
to bring out the virtuosic flair as well as the thematic unity binding each continuous section,
one has to think about this music in terms of being on stage and projecting it across the
(04:42):
footlights. I think that's really the essential nature of the Liszt Sonata. So let's begin with
the pianist Simone Boréer, who played the Liszt Sonata at Carnegie Hall on November 11, 1947.
This performance was first issued on the Remington label after the pianist's death in 1951,
(05:07):
and it appeared on LP again in the mid-70s in the Vox Labels historic series, and then it turned up
on CD as part of the APR Labels series devoted to Simone Boréer's Carnegie Hall concerts that
all survived in sound. This is truly personalized playing, sometimes even self-indulgent, but
(05:33):
in a positive way with all kinds of stretched out robatos and filled in textures. This interpretation
is very improvisatory, yet it somehow hangs together and you really feel swept up in the
moment as you listen. Not every pianist was able to convey a sense of playing in the present,
(05:55):
but Simone Boréer definitely does. Although Claudio Arau made what I consider to be one of
the reference studio recordings of the Liszt Sonata, some of his live performances were even more
incendiary and daring, and several of them have been released on CD. But one in particular stands
(06:19):
out to me, and this one comes from a 1977 concert in Toronto that was issued on the Marston label
on a release called Liszt Illuminated. Arau is 74 years old at the time of this performance,
but he sounds like a youngster. Just the fugetta itself and its unrelenting buildup,
(06:42):
and the lyrical passages are stretched to their rhetorical limits in a way that probably Arau
would not have allowed himself to do in the studio. But these gestures never lapse into vulgarity,
and it's a really compelling performance that I think you ought to hear. George Bolette,
(07:03):
who I mentioned before, was another aristocratic interpreter of the Liszt Sonata, as his two studio
recordings of the piece abundantly prove. But if you can get past the rather average fidelity
in sonics of an audience recording made at his February 5th, 1972 recital in New York City's
(07:31):
Alice Tully Hall, you're going to hear a more demonic and daring and poetic
interpretation of the Liszt Sonata from George Bolette than in his recordings. And you don't
even notice the brilliance and flexibility of his technique, because musically it's all of a piece,
(07:52):
but he is on staggering form. And this Liszt Sonata performance was released on the AS Disc
label on CD, if you can find it. As I said before, George Bolette was definitely a pianist who played
totally differently in front of an audience than in front of studio microphones. Another wonderful
(08:15):
Liszt Sonata from 1972 features a pianist primarily known as a teacher, but as a pianist,
he could play just about anything. And I've spoken about this pianist on this podcast before.
Howard Karp. He lived from 1929 until 2014. And when he retired from teaching in the year 2000,
(08:39):
a two CD set was released containing some really fantastic live performances.
And although he's more modern a Liszt interpreter, stylistically speaking, compared to
Aurao and Bolette and Barrère, the sweep of his Liszt Sonata and the bigness of his conception
(09:02):
and the generosity of sound and spirit all come through this performance. He really does take you
on a journey. There's a wonderful live Liszt Sonata with Sviatoslav Richter. I think it's one
of his most inspired performances surviving of this work. It was given at Carnegie Hall
(09:23):
on May 18th, 1965. And that was just one week after Vladimir Horowitz made his historic return
on May 9th. Now this performance of the Liszt Sonata, I think may even be more colorful and
dramatic and luminous than some of Richter's other Liszt Sonata performances. The source recording
(09:47):
for this performance, I suspect, comes from an audience tape. It first turned up on a bootleg LP.
But then I remember that Phillips released a recording of Richter playing the Liszt Sonata
on its short-lived legendary Classics Reissue series. And the only information that Phillips
(10:10):
provided was that this Liszt Sonata was a live recording from Budapest in 1960. And I remember
when I got hold of this CD years ago, immediately I became suspicious because simply the audience
coughs and the quiet opening occurred in exactly the same place as that bootleg LP that I had of
(10:34):
the 1965 Carnegie performance. It was identical to what I heard on the Phillips CD. So I checked
further and indeed this Phillips CD had the 1965 Carnegie Hall performance, not a spurious 1960
Budapest performance. In fact, Richter never played the Liszt Sonata in 1960, so far as I know.
(10:59):
And actually some years later, the Pellexa label issued this performance in what I understand
is a slightly better transfer than on the Phillips disc. But that Pellexa CD has long been out of
print and you can find it for around $140 on Amazon.com. It's also been released on the Saint
(11:23):
Laurent Studio label and on the Talents of Russia label. I haven't heard any of these transfers,
so I only have in my collection that Phillips disc and I have the original bootleg LP, which I think
sounds a little bit better, but I really can't report any further on which transfer of this
(11:46):
Carnegie Hall Richter Liszt Sonata is the best one. But it is a performance that all piano mavens
should hear. Now I'd like to talk about the Hungarian pianist Irén Márek. She lived from
1905 until 1986. I first discovered her through a remarkable all Liszt LP recorded in the 1950s for
(12:09):
the Draco label. And my late friend Alan Evans, whose name always pops up on this podcast,
he turned me on to this disc and I actually found a copy of it in the same junk shop where Alan
found his copy of this disc. And being the piano archaeologist that he was, Alan went so far as to
(12:33):
track Irén Márek down at her home in Independence, California near Death Valley, where she had lived
for years and where she gave concerts from her home. And she continued making recordings every
now and then. She would record her practice sessions also, and she did not want these practice
session tapes to circulate. So after her death, one of her close friends gave these tapes that
(13:01):
she had preserved to Alan. And among these tapes was an uninterrupted run through of the Liszt Sonata
recorded on July 24th, 1975. And it's a real performance. It's not note perfect, but it is a
real living performance that's set out in shapely and colorful paragraphs. It's full of startling
(13:27):
accentuations and beautiful transitions. There is so much to savor here, and you can tell that
she is a seasoned Liszt interpreter, and I really enjoyed listening to this. For many years, a less
than high fidelity recording made at a concert in France in 1973 circulated among several collectors
(13:51):
who were devoted to the pianist on this performance, Cyprien Katsaris, playing the Liszt Sonata. And I
had heard about this recording for years from the pianist's friend Francis Romano, but I had never
actually heard it until Cyprien Katsaris himself released it on his own Piano 21 label as part of
(14:16):
a double album devoted to works of Liszt. Cyprien's performance is a throwback to the kind of
old school Liszt Sonata we get from Simon Barer or in that old Alfred Courtauld recording perhaps.
But the audacity of his conception and how Katsaris in his early 20s projects such confidence and as
(14:41):
well as sincerity, you never question at all that the young Cyprien Katsaris expresses the courage of
his convictions as he still does to this day. And this is a Liszt Sonata that's all of one piece and
it just begs for you to pay attention in every bar. Once you hear it, you'll never forget it and
(15:04):
you know you get used to the sound as you're listening to it and I'm very happy that he did
sanction its release finally. There's also a marvelous live Liszt Sonata performed by Terrence
Judd recorded during the final rounds of the 1978 Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow
(15:26):
where this highly talented British pianist only placed fourth. But this is a Liszt Sonata full of
poise and drama and character in every moment and who cares about the occasional drop notes? I mean
this is a compelling performance and it's a precious souvenir of a brilliant pianist who would
(15:46):
take his own life in 1979 only months after his 22nd birthday. When you listen to playing on this
level one can only imagine what might have been because there's no question that Terrence Judd was
a major talent and he was pretty much fully formed artistically speaking. However, if it had not been
(16:13):
for at least one audience member who snuck a recording device into Carnegie Hall we would
not have one of the most exciting and dramatic and daring and poetic and characterful Liszt Sonata
performances in existence and this features Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz had started to bring
(16:39):
back the Liszt Sonata into his repertoire in 1976 when he played it at Powell Hall in St. Louis
and this performance as well as the rehearsals were recorded by RCA Victor for commercial release
and it was issued in 1977 in edited form in anticipation of Horowitz's golden jubilee season
(17:04):
in 1978. And as you can tell in the St. Louis performance both in the edited recording and in
the unedited concert performance he had not totally assimilated the work. I mean there are
wonderful wonderful moments of course but there also are some hesitancies and some awkward
(17:26):
phrasings that would sort themselves out in further performances. I don't think that Horowitz had played
the Liszt Sonata in public since 1949 so far as I know and for a 73 year old pianist to reacquire
such demanding repertoire is no small task even if he is Vladimir Horowitz. But as I said during
(17:50):
the 1977 and 78 season Horowitz did perform the sonata more and more and he gradually got it all
back into his fingers and his spirit. So by the time of his March 1978 Carnegie Hall performances
everything was there. He played the Liszt Sonata on March 12th at Carnegie Hall the week before
(18:16):
but it is the March 19th performance that really catches fire. Now I can understand why RCA Victor
did not record the concert for the simple reason that there already was Horowitz's new official
recording on the market but I only wish in retrospect that a professional recording had
(18:38):
been made because this March 19th 1978 Liszt Sonata is head and shoulders above either the edited
1976 Powell Hall recording or the unedited version that Sony BMG eventually released in a box set.
And by the way Joe Patrick who I talked about earlier worked very hard trying to remaster that
(19:06):
Carnegie Hall March 19th audience tape to make it releasable and he did a pretty good job of it
although in the end it sonically didn't quite pass muster for Sony BMG to bring it out.
Now you can find various transfers of this performance floating around the internet
(19:29):
and I think it's pretty easy to listen past the sonic problems because Horowitz's personality
still comes through and it's precisely because of performances like this that hardcore piano mavens
seek out live recordings authorized or otherwise and as I said earlier even George Bolette encouraged
(19:51):
live taping because he knew that studio recordings did not capture his artistry at its best. The only
thing with this Horowitz March 19th performance is that some of the transfers that have been
floating out there are not properly pitched they're a little bit sharp so you have to
really do some deep research. So if you are a Liszt Sonata aficionado you might enjoy hunting
(20:18):
down these nine live and unedited performances featuring Simone Barreiro, Claudio Arau, George
Bolette, Howard Karp, Sviatoslav Richter, Ireen Marek, Cyprien Katsaris, Terence Judd, and Vladimir
Horowitz. At a certain point I should do a podcast episode where I talk about commercial
(20:42):
recordings of the Liszt Sonata. Maybe I'll do two of them. How about an episode that's based on what
the critical consensus has been for the Liszt Sonata on record and then I'll do an episode
about worthy Liszt Sonata commercial recordings by pianists who may be lesser known yet who still
gave us marvelous interpretations that all piano mavens should try to hear. This is Jed Dissler
(21:09):
and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
Thank you so much for being with me and I look forward to us being together for the next episode.
Take good care.
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