A l s o ava i l a b l e A selection of Piano Classics titles For the full listing please visit www.piano-classics.com
RAVEL COMPLETE PIANO MUSIC
Liszt
MENDELSSOHN
FRANÇOIS DUMONT
LIEDER OHNE WORTE Songs without Words Complete
Chopin ÉTUDES
complete
Balázs Szokolay
2-CD
PCLD0055
Z lata C hoChieva
2-CD
PCLD0067
PCL0068
Earl Wild
BENJAMIN GODARD
The complete transcriptions and original piano works VOLUME 1
Schubert
Giovanni Doria Miglietta, piano
PCL0069
PCL0070
PIANO WORKS
Piano Sonata in B flat D960 Piano Sonata in A D664
Barcarolles Scènes italiennes Vingt pièces Op. 58
Klára Würtz
ALESSANDRO DELJAVAN
PCL0072
Wagner Transcriptions Tannhäuser Overture, Isoldes Liebestod a.o.
François Dumont
There can be few composers whose debt to another is as great as Richard Wagner’s to Franz Liszt. Not only was Liszt unfailingly generous in his financial assistance of the impecunious and outrageously demanding Wagner (although he was by no means wealthy himself), he provided continual and wholehearted support in less tangible but equally important ways. On becoming Kapellmeister at the ducal court of Weimar, he used the theatre and orchestra at his disposal to present revivals of Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser and stage the première of Lohengrin. He was also an ardent proselytizer for Wagner’s revolutionary ideas on music drama which, were it not for Liszt’s courageous and decisive action in 1849, might well have remained abstract theory, with Wagner remembered only as the composer of a handful of romantic operas on historical themes. When Wagner fled Dresden following the failed Dresden uprising of May 1849 in which he played an active role, arriving in Weimar one step ahead of the authorities, it was Liszt who gave him refuge and masterminded (and paid for) his escape from German territory, thus ensuring that he
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escaped the fate of his fellow revolutionaries (death or lengthy imprisonment) which would have cut short or at least severely inhibited his creativity. Liszt employed his own creative powers for the production of what he termed “modest propaganda on the inadequate piano for the sublime genius of Wagner”, creating a total of 21 transcriptions of excerpts from Wagner’s works (some of which are revisions of earlier works). His use of opera as a source of raw material dated from the Impromptu brilliant sur des themes de Rossini et Spontini of 1824 when he was eleven, and during his virtuoso years he produced a series of original compositions, usually termed Reminiscences or Fantasies, primarily as vehicles for the display of his own dazzling technical virtuosity in which he created extravagant confections on popular operatic themes in the manner of extended variations. After his retirement from the concert platform in the late 1840s, he began producing what he referred to as partitions de piano whose purpose was to effect a faithful transfer of the substance of an orchestral score to the piano with the minimum of modification, addition or omission
beyond what was necessary to manage its complexity. Some were produced as publishers’ commissions, others for concert performance by friends (for example the three Verdi transcriptions he made for his pupil Hans von Bülow), others to provide wider access to music which would be otherwise be unavailable to the general public. In February 1849, a few months before the momentous events in Dresden, Liszt wrote to Wagner informing him that he intended to “appropriate, according to my own fashion, for piano” the overture to Tannhäuser and Wolfram’s Act III aria. The former he predicted would probably be beyond the capacity of most players (and von Bülow records an occasion when Liszt himself got into difficulties playing it) but the aria “should be suitable for second rate pianists”. Although it might seem odd to set out create a piece that could only be executed by the most technically advanced if its raison d’être was to render the music accessible, replication of the complex nature of the orchestral writing provided valuable insight into the extent and nature of that complexity: so the more difficult it was to play, the better it fulfilled that function. Both
Tannhäuser transcriptions follow the score closely with only minor modifications to the orchestral material accompanying the return of the chorale at the end of overture (the original Dresden version as the Paris revision was some years in the future) and in the accompaniment in the aria (to which Liszt also adds a brief coda) which, as he promised, is an uncomplicated rendering with only a single ossia offering a simplified alternative. Liszt made two treatments of material from Lohengrin, in 1852 of Elsas Brautzug zum Münster (which he paired with the Entry of the Guests from Tannhäuser) and in 1854 of Elsas Traum and Lohengrins Verweis (to which he added the Act III Festspeil und Brautlied). All are straightforward renderings of the more reflective and musically uncomplicated scenes from the opera and present few challenges to the player. This is not the case however with the 1867 version of the closing scene from Tristan und Isolde. Written at a time when his personal relationship with Wagner was at its lowest point (mainly due to Wagner’s relationship with his daughter Cosima, then still married to von Bülow) this is perhaps Liszt’s finest rendition of a Wagner work (as
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François Dumont he was always able to keep his appreciation of Wagner’s artistry separate from his feelings towards the flawed individual from which it emanated). To solve the problem of replicating on what is essentially a percussive instrument the massively extended musical lines of soloist and orchestra, Liszt deployed a battery of tremolandos, arpeggios and rapid chord repetitions, in addition to extensive use of the pedal (which is to be applied throughout virtually the entire piece). In the opera, Isolde’s Schlusslied (as it was then known) emerges out of nothing and so to provide a fixed starting point, Liszt prefaces it with four bars from the Act II duet where the lovers imagine a “sehnend verlangter Liebestod” (yearnedfor longed-for love death). As this is the only occurrence of the word Liebestod in the opera – Isolde does not use it in her final outpouring – it has been suggested that Liszt’s inclusion of these bars in his piano version may have contributed to the association of that term with the operas’ final scene. Latterly Liszt returned to the liberated practice of his earlier years in departing more radically from the originals (much to Wagner’s irritation). In the Ballade from Der Fliegende
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Holländer of 1872, themes from the opera are interwoven into Senta’s aria to conjure up the doom-laden relationship between Senta and the Dutchman and evoke the more stormy aspects of the work as a whole. A more radical process of deconstruction occurs in the pieces created out of material from Das Rheingold (1875) and Parsifal (1882 – one the last transcriptions he made). The first juxtaposes the Valhalla and sword leitmotifs (Liszt was one of the first to recognize the significance of these in Wagner’s music) to create a curiously detached piece which is tenuously related to the original especially in its conclusion. Even more radical is the amalgamation of four themes from Parsifal, associated with the bells, the march of the Grail knights, the “holy fool” and Grail itself, into a darkly meditative piece which subverts Wagner’s holistic musical concept and by a juxtaposition of the (intentionally?) bombastic treatment of the knights’ march with the simplicity of the holy fool/grail themes renders Liszt’s response to the opera’s message ambiguous. David Moncur
French pianist François Dumont's international career has been launched by his success in major international piano competitions winning prizes in the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland, the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan the Montecarlo Piano Masters, the Top of the world competition, Norway and the Cleveland International competition in the United States. He has obtained the "Declic" Prize from the French Government and is a laureate of the Banque Populaire Fondation as well as the Charles Oulmont Prize from the Fondation de France. In 2011 he has been nominated for the "Victoires de la musique", a major French classical music event. In 2012 he has received the Prix de la Révélation from the Syndicate of Music Critics in France. François Dumont studied in Lyon with Chrystel Saussac and Hervé Billaut. He was fourteen years old when he entered the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Bruno Rigutto's class. He later studied with artists such as Murray Perahia, Leon Fleisher, Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, Andreas Staier and Fou Ts'ong, during masterclasses at the prestigious International Piano Academy
Lake Como in Italy and works with William Grant Naboré as a recipient of the Theo Lieven Chair in Lugano Conservatory. His recording of the Complete Mozart Sonatas (for Anima Records) has received the "Maestro" Award from the "Pianiste" Magazine. It has been praised for its "eloquent inventivity, its free imagination, architectural science and a perlé touch that confirms a rare maturity". His next recording of late Chopin works for Artalinna received the same award. His recording of the Complete Piano Music of Maurice Ravel has recently been issued soon for Piano Classics and received the FFF from Telerama Magazine. François Dumont has played in Salle Pleyel,Théâtre du Châtelet, Salle Gaveau in Paris and takes regularly part in various emissions for Radio France, including Dans la Cour des Grands and Génération Jeunes Interprètes by Gaelle Le Gallic, Un mardi idéal by Arièle Buteaux, Plaisir d'amour by Frédéric Lodéon. He appears as a soloist with orchestra in France and abroad : he has played with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Fortworth Symphony in the United-States, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne (conductor Jesùs Lopez-Cobòs), Belgium National Symphony, Warsaw National Philharmonic (conductor Antoni Wit), Krakow Philharmonic, Montecarlo
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Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, Tokyo Symphony in Japan, Wuhan Philharmonic in China. He has given recitals in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Brazil, Roumania and Mexico. In March 2011 he made his début in Russia playing Tchaikovsky concerto n.1 with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra in St Petersburg. In April 2012 he played Brahms D minor concerto with Orchestre de Bretagne conducted by Arie van Beck. During the 2013-2014 season, he was invited to play with the Orchestre de Cannes (conducted by Wolfgang Doerner), Orchestre de Bretagne (conducted by Ariane Matiakh), Orchestre Philharmonique du Maroc (conducted by Olivier Holt), Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by James Liu Peng). In August 2014, upon the invitation from the National Chopin Institute, he returns to Warsaw for a recital in the Philharmonie. Also much in demand as a chamber music partner, he has played with violinist Augustin Dumay, violist Tabea Zimmermann, cellist Henri Demarquette, the Talich Quartet, Quatuor Voce, Quatuor Debussy and Quatuor Sine Nomine. In April 2014 he plays the Complete Brahms Sonatas with Augustin Dumay. François Dumont is a member of the Trio Elégiaque, with whom he has recorded a CD of works by Messiaen and Dusapin (World Première) that has received many awards by the critics, including the Diapason d'Or. The Trio Elégiaque Photo: © DR
has successfully performed the World Première of Nicolas Bacri's Fourth Trio, "Sonata seria" (which is dedicated to them), in the Grand Salon des Invalides, Paris. Their recent recording of Trios by Rachmaninov, Arensky and RimskyKorsakov has been praised by the critics ('coup de coeur' by Alain Duault on RTL). In April 2011, the Trio Elegiaque has performed the complete Beethoven Trios in Paris, Opera Comique. Their recording of the complete Beethoven Trios have just been released for Brilliant Classics and has been awarded 5 Diapason, as well as the 'Coup de coeur de l'année' by France Musique. François Dumont in many festivals such as the Festival Radio France Montpellier, Festival Chopin de Bagatelle in Paris, Festival d'Auverssur-Oise, Hamburg International Steinway Festival, Ljubljana Festival,"Chopin and his Europe" Festival in Warsaw, Kennedy Center in Washington. François Dumont recently played Beethoven 1st Concerto in Salle Gaveau, Paris, and Ravel's G major concerto at the final concert of the Journées Ravel de Montfort l'Amaury, the home town of this composer. Highlights of the 2014-2015 season include a Japan Tour with the St Petersburg Symphony performing Tchaikovsky Concerto n.1, Mozart concerti K.271 and K.466 with the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne conducted by Darell Ang, as well as the two Ravel Concerti in Lyon, Auditorium, with the Orchestre National de Lyon conducted by Leonard Slatkin.
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