1001 classical works (The best) VI- 1850-

Recording

Title: The Complete Etudes
Performed by Claudio Arrau
Year: 1979

Review

Claudio Arrau, the Chilean pianist, has no peer in the Transcendental Studies. His technique is startlingly good for a septuagenarian, and the sweep and inspiration that he brings to every study is utterly magnificent. Few play Wilde Jagd more relentlessly (the only faster performances I know of are by Kissin, Berman and Richter, but none makes as much music out of it). The drive and fury of the Allegro Agitato Molto is unique, the poetry and sonority of Hamonies du Soir almost unreal. The thunderous octaves in Eroica impress mightily too. Yet most of all, it is hard to imagine Chasse-Neige sounding more harrowing and dramatic than it is rendered here. Some of his tempo choices are controversial: Feux Follets and Mazeppa are slower than the norm. That said, I find Mazeppa particularly effective at this pace -- it sounds like a tone poem in Arrau's hands, and not a mere gunfire of notes. Feux Follets too is unusually delicate, though Richter may still top him in this piece. Arrau's discography is huge and full of riches, yet these recordings deserve to be listed among his greatest achievements of all.

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The Transcendental Etudes (French: Études d'exécution transcendante), S.139, are a series of twelve compositions written for solo piano by Franz Liszt in 1852. The 1852 version is the revision of an even more technically difficult 1837 version, which in turn was the elaboration of a set of studies written in 1826.
The Transcendental Etudes contain extreme technical difficulties, such as the right hand configuration and left hand leaps in the Transcendental Etude No. 5.

Boris Berezovsky plays one of the most difficult pieces for the piano: The Liszt Transcendental Etude No. 4 "Mazeppa."

Recording

Title: Rigoletto
Performed by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
with Dirk Sagemuller, Kurt Moll, Walter Gullino, Olive Fredricks, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Piero Cappuccilli, Hanna Schwarz, Placido Domingo, Ileana Cotrubas, Luigi De Corato
Conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini
Year: 1979

Review

This is not one of the most famous recordings of Verdi's warhorse, but in my opinion it is the best. The great Italian conductor Carlo Maria Giulini stays away from the melodramatic caricature of opera that this can easily turn into, and brings out the dark, brooding colors of the drama and of the music. He combines lyricism with the greatest dramatic power, at speeds which feel exactly right, even though they are slower than most. And not only does he have a superb individual view of the piece, he is a sensitive accompanist, too, giving the excellent Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra its full dominance without drowning out the singers. And what singers! The velvety, golden voice of Piero Cappuccilli, used with unfailing intelligence and musicality; the warm, gorgeous voice of Plácido Domingo; and perhaps most stunning of all, the bewitching lyric soprano of Ileana Cotrubas, the best Gilda I have ever heard. These singers may not hit the stratospheric unwritten high notes on the Bonynge recording with Pavarotti, Milnes and Sutherland, but they do offer consistently refined, thoughtful and beautiful singing. Cotrubas' radiant singing alone is worth the modest price of this set. The great Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov makes a riveting, dark-toned Sparafucile; Elena Obraztsova sings Maddalena perfectly well, though not on the level of her colleagues. Kurt Moll is cast luxuriously as Monterone. At mid-price, with full libretto and translation and with excellent work from the VPO and chorus, this is a Rigoletto that must be in all Verdi collections.

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Verdi was commissioned to write a new opera by the La Fenice opera house in Venice in 1850, at a time when he was already a well-known composer with a degree of freedom in choosing the works he would prefer to set to music. He then asked Piave (with whom he had already created Ernani, I due Foscari, Macbeth, Il Corsaro and Stiffelio) to examine the play Kean by Alexandre Dumas, père, but he felt he needed a more energetic subject to work on.
Verdi soon stumbled upon Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse. He later explained that "It contains extremely powerful positions ... The subject is great, immense, and has a character that is one of the most important creations of the theatre of all countries and all Ages". It was a highly controversial subject and Hugo himself had already had trouble with censorship in France, which had banned productions of his play after its first performance nearly twenty years earlier (and would continue to ban it for another thirty years). As Austria at that time directly controlled much of Northern Italy, it came before the Austrian Board of Censors. Hugo's play depicted a king (Francis I of France) as an immoral and cynical womanizer, something that was not accepted in Europe during the Restoration period.

Luciano Pavarotti sings La donna e mobile from act III of Verdi's Rigoletto: