Friday, February 7, 2020

Hyperion’s Liszt Project Releases Soprano CD

courtesy of PIAS

It has been well over a year since Hyperion released the fifth volume of pianist Julius Drake’s project to record the complete songs of Franz Liszt. The sixth volume was finally released at the end of last month, and the vocalist is soprano Julia Kleiter. Reviewing the past releases, I realized that this was the first soprano album in the set. The second and fourth volumes presented mezzos, and first and fifth were made with tenors. That leaves the third, which offered a bass-baritone. I gather that it is still the case that one more album remains, and I am not about to handicap the vocal range for that recording!

For the record, the catalog numbers originated by Humphrey Searle that cover the songs run from 269 to 340a, covering the years from 1839 to 1883. (Searle prepared the catalog for the fourth edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which was published in 1940.) Drake’s project provides further evidence of just how productive Liszt was.

At the same time, it also reveals evidence of Liszt’s capacity for recycling. My guess is that most, if not all, of the tracks on Drake’s latest release will be new to most listeners. Nevertheless, many of the selections will have rings of familiarity of different intensity. They include both melodic motifs and virtuoso passages for piano that are likely to resonate with those that know Liszt primarily for his solo piano compositions.

That said, there is much to enjoy in sampling Liszt’s efforts in a genre not usually associated with him. I assume I am not the only one that has been following Drake’s journey from the beginning and am looking forward to how he will wrap things up with his final volume. Still, this is content that I prefer to listen to in small samples. Nevertheless, those samples (pretty much regardless of what they are specifically) leave me hoping that at least one of the vocalists performing here in San Francisco will take the trouble to include Liszt on a recital program.

No comments: