Deutsche Grammphon Celebrate Franz Liszt's 200th with Collected Works

Anniversaries have always been a useful time to assess and celebrate an artist's life and output. 2011 features many important anniversaries including on October 22nd the 200th anniversary of the birth of pianist, composer, teacher and conductor Franz Liszt. Well-known for both his virtuoso playing and prolific compositional output, Liszt was a man of many talents who drew on many sources of inspiration and in turn inspired legions of later musicians and composers. Deutsche Grammophon and Decca have a long history of recording the works of Liszt and with a number of new and catalog titles will celebrate the multifaceted life of this singularly great man.

Decca started the celebration in May with an all-new recital of selected works for solo piano by Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire. Including works both familiar and rare, Freire brings his customary elegance to the Consolations, Hungarian Rhapsody no. 3, Ballade no. 2 in b minor and much more.

This past June Deutsche Grammophon & Decca combined resources to release Liszt: The Collection. This 34-CD box set, while not a complete collection given the vast size of Liszt's output is a remarkably broad selection of the composer's works. The box is divided into sections devoted to Works for Piano and Orchestra; Orchestral Works; Solo Piano Works; Organ Works; Lieder; and Sacred Choral Works. Mixed throughout are rarities (especially among the Sacred Choral Works) which only a Deutsche Grammophon & Decca box set could offer.

Additional catalog projects will include a 3-CD set of Alfred Brendel's personal selections of his favorite Liszt recordings, available August 30, as well as a re-issue of the benchmark Krystian Zimerman recordings of the concertos and a selection of solo works including the formidable sonata, available October 4.

Liszt LegacyOne of the more intriguing releases this year will be The Liszt Legacy (10/11/2011), a 10-CD box set that brings together five great piano virtuosos of the past in a staggering display of virtuosity and "old-style" pianism - quite unlike anything else on offer in the Liszt Year. The artists can be regarded as Liszt's heirs for their astounding virtuosic command, for having created a repertoire of their own, or for having studied with Liszt's own pupils or grand-pupils. The box draws exclusively on recordings from the American Decca and Westminster labels, most of which have never been released on CD, and, in the case of Claudio Arrau, are now being released for the very first time. The recordings, from the 1950s and early 1960s, both mono and stereo, have all be painstakingly restored. Arrau plays previously unreleased Beethoven (five favorite sonatas) and Chopin; De Larrocha offers pristine accounts of her core repertoire of Granados, Turina and Mompou; Lewenthal has scintillating Scriabin, an incandescent program of Toccatas and Encores; Moiseiwitch, in his last recorded sessions (New York, early 1960s), ranges from Beethoven and Schumann to Mussorgsky; and Petri unfolds an unforgettable program of Liszt and Busoni. Each artist is featured on two CDs to display his or her powers.

Deutsche Grammophon and Decca have looked not only in their catalogs but also to their rosters for new additions to the Liszt catalog. This year will see Daniel Barenboim's first recording of the piano concertos as pianist, available October 11. He performs with the Staatskapelle Berlin which is under the direction of none other than Pierre Boulez, who is also making his first recording of these works.

French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard returns with an intellectually stimulating and musically fascinating new recording: The Liszt Project (9/20/2011). Surely one of the most fascinating assessments of Liszt's solo piano works to be released this year, this 2-CD release pairs works by Liszt with works by the composer's contemporaries and successors who were inspired by him. Thus the seminal B minor sonata is contrasted with other one-movement sonatas by Berg, Wagner and Scriabin and shorter pieces are connected with works by Bartók, Stroppa, Ravel and Messiaen.

Deutsche Grammophon and Decca also have prepared two websites to complete the celebration. www.CrazyLiszt.com is a unique site which takes a page from Franz Liszt's own life experiences and encourages fans to "liszt" their own wild and crazy experiences. Liszt was well-known for his superstar status as a performer - in fact, the term "Lisztomania" was coined by the German poet Heinrich Heine in response to the levels of adulation Liszt received. Women were reported to wear bracelets made out of broken piano strings from his instruments and to carry phials with the dregs of his coffee. In that spirit, we invite everyone to publish their own "liszt" and vote on their favorites. The author of the winning "liszt" will receive a miniature red piano.

Throughout the site visitors listen to and learn about key works by Liszt. For a more in-depth look, visit www.liszt200.com. The site allows streaming samples of key works performed by Deutsche Grammophon and Decca's strong roster of pianists. The chosen selections are based on the 2-CD Liszt: Wild & Crazy compilation which is a celebration of Liszt's flamboyant side from an array of great pianists featuring works of dazzling virtuosity. The featured pianists include Géza Anda, Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Jorge Bolet, Shura Cherkassky, Vladimir Horowitz, Zoltán Kocsis, Lang Lang, Alice Sara Ott, Mikhail Pletnev, Sviatoslav Richter and Yundi Li.

More releases will arrive to celebrate Liszt's 200th birthday from both historic and modern perspectives. The sheer number of Liszt's compositions can be overwhelming, but a well-guided exploration can lead to discovering new works and re-visiting well-known ones. Deutsche Grammophon and Decca with their long histories of recording many of the world's premiere artists provide a legacy of vital recordings and also look toward the future by continuing this tradition of excellence with today's musicians.

For more information, visit www.deutschegrammophon.com or www.deccaclassics.com