Liszt: Winterreise (after Schubert), Totentanz, Gretchen

A new concept album by Leonardo Pierdomenico, in which Love and Death interact in their own merciful or lugubrious way. • Franz Liszt was fascinated by t he songs of Schubert, in a time when the recognition of the Viennese genius was at a low tide. He transcribed a subs tantial quantity of them for piano solo, sometimes merely combining the existing solo voice and accompaniment, but also creating highly elab orate versions, full of virtuoso and intricate embellishments. This album offers a selection of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, the journey of a disillusioned young lover into oblivion and death.

The Gretchen section from Liszt’s own Faust Symphony is the bridge towards the Totentanz, for piano solo, a wild and hallucinatory evocation of Death, through the quoting of t he Gregorian hymn of Dies Irae, a masterpiece of unparalleled imagination and frenzy.

This third recording for Piano Classics by young It ali an pianist Leonardo Pierdomenico firmly establishes his position as one of the most promising artists of his generat ion. His first album with works by Franz Liszt (PCL 10151) received rave reviews from the international press, among which the prestigious Gram aphone Critic’s Choice: “His highly developed technique and cultivated sound, both adaptable to a variety of affects, are wedded to those twin essentials for artistic Liszt - playing: imagination combined with thoroughgoing, scrupulous musicality.” His second album with the Beethoven/Liszt Symphony 5 and the Beethoven/Alkan 3rd Piano Concerto (PCL 10224) made the critic of F anfare declare Pierdomenico as “the Carlos Kleiber of the piano”

• Liszt: Gretchen aus Faust-Symphonie, S513
• Liszt: Totentanz, S525 for solo piano
• Liszt: Zwolf Lieder Von Franz Schubert - [aus] Winterreise, S561