Mariam Batsashvili – Romantic Piano Masters (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

"The Georgian-born pianist leaves nothing to be desired with the generous warmth of her interpretations," wrote the music magazine Gramophone about Mariam Batsashvili's reading of works by Chopin and Liszt. The recording of Romantic Piano Masters also revolves entirely around Franz Liszt and his contemporaries.

However, the pianist does not focus on Liszt's own works, but on his piano arrangements, which the famous keyboard artist made for compositions by his colleagues. Among them are songs by Franz Schubert as well as works for large symphonic instrumentation, for example the waltz from Gounod's opera Faust. Liszt's ability to transfer the sound of an orchestra to the piano keyboard is unsurpassed for Mariam Batsashvili. He evokes "the energy of the whole universe" with his realization of Wagner's Isolde's Liebestod, the pianist enthuses.

But Liszt's then artistic (and now almost forgotten) rival Sigismund Thalberg is also represented on the album with his highly virtuosic compilation of themes from Bellini's opera La sonnambula. Harold Bauer's piano arrangement of César Franck's organ work Prélude Fugue et Variation creates a completely different mood. "It is a piece to meditate and reflect on – for me it opens the doors to spirituality," says Mariam Batsashvili. And with the right touch technique, the pianist even has the opportunity to "evoke the illusion of an organ in a church acoustics," she adds.

TRACKLIST

1 Prélude, Fugue et Variation, Op. 18, CFF 30B: I. Prélude (Andantino)
2 Prélude, Fugue et Variation, Op. 18, CFF 30B: II. Lento + III. Fugue (Allegretto ma non troppo)
3 Prélude, Fugue et Variation, Op. 18, CFF 30B: IV. Variation (Andantino)
4 Grand Caprice sur des motifs de 'La sonnambula' de V. Bellini, Op. 46
5 Isoldens Liebestod, S. 447 (After Richard Wagner)
6 Die Loreley, S. 532
7 Lieder aus Franz Schubert's "Schwanengesang", S. 560: No. 7 Ständchen
8 Lieder aus Franz Schubert's "Schwanengesang", S. 560: No. 3 Aufenthalt
9 Valse No. 5 in A-Flat Major, Op. 42
10 Valse de l'opéra "Faust", S. 407 (After Gonoud)
11 3 Caprices-Valses, S. 214: I. Valse de bravoure
12 Waltz in G-Flat Major, D. Anh. I/14, "Kupelwieser Walzer"



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