Les deux confrontations sont également fascinantes : les brèves fantaisies solaires de Scarlatti s’atomisent dans les diffractions lumineuses des Encores de Berio, les unes comme les autres faisant assaut de poésie avec une touche d’étrangeté qu’Andrea Lucchesini dose en magicien. Quel pianiste !, qui aura trop longtemps été absent au disque, et est resté fidèle à ses exigences intellectuelles.

Ensemble, les artistes font revivre les deux puissantes compositions et présentent un portrait complexe, passionné et émotionnel de l’existence humaine.

Specialist record labels may face a challenging time, but they do at least benefit from one growth industry: the ongoing Franz Liszt discoveries and reconstructions. Yet nobody was expecting to hear anything of the composer's opera Sardanapalo, begun and abandoned in the early 1850s. For all Liszt's tireless role in championing operas by his peers, he wrote his only complete opera (Don Sanche) aged 13. Now it turns out that Act I of Sardanapalo had been sketched fully enough to allow musicologist David Trippett to produce a realisation of the score.

What emerges sounds like a catalogue of styles from Bellini and Verdi to Mendelssohn and Wagner, an unsatisfying mix that lacks its own distinctive voice. Still, it's good to be able to hear it and fitting that Liszt's old Weimar orchestra (now under Kirill Karabits) has recorded it. In the title role, the plangent tenor Airam Hernandez confirms his status as a rising star; but it is Mirra, the king's lover, who carries the burden and Joyce El-Khoury is on exciting, mettlesome form. As the soothsayer Beleso, Oleksandr Pushniak projects a darkly imposing voice.

Though Liszt's operatic ambitions were never fulfilled, he found his metier in the symphonic poem – with contrasting fortunes that are underlined by the inclusion here of the contemporaneous Mazeppa, also based on Byron. Quintessential Liszt, this masterpiece telling the story of a Ukrainian hero is brought to vivid life under the baton of today's leading Ukrainian conductor.

dem hervorragenden italienischen Pianisten Andrea Lucchesini [ist] eine der interessantesten CDs der letzten Zeit gelungen. Nicht nur besticht Lucchesinis ausgewogen klares, dabei unprätentiöses Klavierspiel, sondern vor allem kann er zeigen, wie sehr Musik aus ganz verschiedenen Zeiten dennoch ähnliche Wurzeln und Quellen haben kann.

Wer meint, dass die Solovioline des 20. Jahrhunderts etwas schwierig anzuhören ist, sollte sich die feurigen und klangvollen Interpretationen von Pietsch anhören: ein ganzes Orchester auf einer einzigen Geige.

Pietsch en De Solaun tonen in een uitvoering vol vaart en verve maar ook met veel gevoel de waarde van dit werk aan en herinneren aan andere prachtvertolkingen van Vadim Repin en Boris Berezovsky en Kyung-Wha Chung met Krystian Zimerman.

[…] More remarkable is the recently disinterred German radio tape of Blevins Davis and Robert Breen's famous all-black touring production, again under Smallens. Sponsored by the US State Department, this 'contradictory cultural symbol' reached Moscow late in 1955, albeit losing its initial lustre as original cast members moved on. Even if the 1952 recording is heard today as textually unsatisfactory (provoking the particular ire of Nikolaus Harnoncourt), it has noisy theatrical energy and provides the earliest evidence of the limitless vocal potential of Leontyne Price. Her then husband William Warfield occasionally sounds strained or lightweight but it should be recognised that he was singing from a kneeling position, authentically confined to Porgy's goat cart. The multi talented Cab Callowayas Sportin' Life is a powerful presence too, transmuting the 'dandified' stereotype into something more compelling in his celebrated rendition of 'It ain't necessarily so'. The mono sound has come up superbly. Absent however are such key elements as the glorious orchestral coda of Act 1 scene 1 when Porgy takes in Bess after Robbins's murder. The pivotal 'Buzzard Song' can hardly suggest a world turning to its dark side when it's patched into the final scene. Supporting roles are less strongly taken; the three acts become two.

Flawed as it is, this astonishingly vivid off-air recording conveys the excitement of a classic touring production featuring one of the 20th century greatest voices at the start of her career.

Voor de een is het glas misschien halfleeg en voor de ander halfvol, maar een feit is wel dat we nu wel kunnen luisteren naar wat had kunnen uitgroeien tot een avondvulle opera die, tenminste wat deze eerste akte betreft, het beluisteren zeker waard is.

Qua repertoiresamenstelling is dit een heel bijzondere cd. [...] Mooi dus dat het Swiss Piano Trio zijn luisterrijke, inventief uitgewerkte en in 2015 gestarte Beethovencyclus op deze wijze met deel vijf afsluit voor het label Audite. Het prima op elkaar ingespeelde ensemble speelt met een overrompelende frisheid.

[...] ce premier enregistrement, réalisé à Weimar sous la direction de Kirill Karabits, permet de découvrir une partition pleine de souffle, à michemin entre Verdi et Wagner. L’oeuvre est servie par de bons solistes (dont la soprano Joyce ElKhoury et surtout le ténor Airam Hernandez) et complétée ici par le poème symphonique Mazeppa.