This is a cause for celebration by SACD fans – on the heels of the recent launch of the Mahler SACD series by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra on RCA comes the first Sony Classical SACD in a very long time! I notice these SACDs are all coming from Europe; this one was recorded in Berlin. I suspect there was some insistence from the Europeans in view of the better SACD sales that occur outside of the U.S.
St. Petersburg-born Volodos has been a pianistic sensation ever since his first Sony recording in 1997. His outstanding technical abilities are balanced with a well-developed depth of expression and sensitivity. He was not following a soloist’s career because he refused to enter piano competitions (good for him!). He happened to give a short audition to a Sony Classical executive and was immediately signed to a long-term contract. His initial album was a collection of his own piano transcriptions of classical favorites, and he has done Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Schubert and of course (how could he escape it?) the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1.
Volodos’ all-Liszt recital differs from many all-Liszt programs. It covers a variety of periods of the composer’s life and if any theme comes to the fore it seems to be to illustrate just how avant Liszt’s piano was, and how sometimes it was contrary to the spirit of the times in being very introspective, dark and dour. Two selections from his Annees de pélerinage open the recital; I don’t believe I had appreciated before Volodos’ performance of the 13-minute selection from Liszt’s Swiss cycle of pieces just how progressive he was being harmonically. The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 is at the center of the program and illustrates the virtuoso brilliance of the composer, but it also illustrates Volodos’ abilities in arranging and even extending the piece, giving it a fresh new sound. Another excerpts from The Years of Pilgrimage is heard before one of Liszt’s own arrangements of the music of Bach. Two rather funereal pieces are next, before the concluding dreamy nocturne which Liszt penned in the last year of his life. Volodos displays just a much of a virtuoso approach to these mournful works as to the finger-busting side of Liszt. In combination with the heightened resolution of SACD, their beauty can be appreciated much more easily than most standard recordings in which the works’ subtleties are smeared over sonically.
– John Sunier
