Customer Reviews

Liszt: The 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Let me tell you something. I personally respect everyone's taste. But in this case I have an objection to the point raised by a couple of reviewers.

What is the robotic playing? Szidon's playing is not robotic at all although his approach may be controversial. Yes. His approach is quiet different from other pianists. And I admit that it can make listeners love or hate this album. But it does not prove that his playing is robotic or mechanical.

Actually his approach is highly creative and individual. He has a strong personality whether you like it or not. At least, Szidon can be compared with Cziffra on strong personality essential to express so-called 'Gypsy Spirit'. He has a big mechanism, power, alertness to be a good Lisztean, too.

Indeed the term 'Robotic' may go to Campanella and Yundi Li. They are very good pianists with beautiful sonority but not suitable to Liszt. The Liszt's works always needs multi-dimensional talent and Szidon has it.

Roberto Szidon is undoubtedly one of the greatest living pianists of our time. His Deutsche Grammophon recordings(circa 70's)of Villa Lobos, the Scriabin Sonatas, and especially, of Charles Ives' Concord Sonata put today's more modestly equipped celebrity pianists to shame. This complete set of the Hungarian Rhapsodies is a precious reminder of Szidon's powers at their most glorious. Please, please !!! Let's not let this transcendental artist languish in obscurity any longer! Szidon needs to return to center stage where he so rightfully belongs. At the very least, DG absolutely needs to reissue his Concord Sonata performance which is the greatest recording of the work, period. DG, d'ya hear?!

Szidon plays these pieces wonderfully. Of course, you may not realize this if you've only heard Cziffra's version and think that they are supposed to be played with a rubber mallet and aren't well done if the piano is still standing after the performance.

I can't comment on others', besides an occassional piece by Hofmann, interpretations, but I can say that Szidon stands way above Cziffra in these works.

Szidon's version of the Hungarian Rhapsodies is simply the best I have ever heard - and I own or have heard many other versions of these popular pieces. Yes - his is a very different approach, but one that identifies the essential musicality within these pieces that most pianists miss. Like many of Liszt's most popular works, they are too often played as show pieces or to exhibit a kind of shallow sentimentality, without the performer really giving much thought to their inner musical value. We should be grateful that Szidon has rediscovered these pieces as music!

it is hard to depict with a few words a recording that really puts this so special kind of music into his own style. Roberto Szidon plays in a very direct manner, without transforming the virtuoso passages to adapt them to his possibilities: his piano playing seems to have no limits (as in an older recording of Rachmaninoff's 2° pianosonata also published by DGG); the gipsy style fluently runs through the keyboard to the ears of the listener as magic. There is still no better recording of these pieces, despite the -almost 30 years- separing us from the studio days.

Most of the Brazilian pianists have been colorists. From the times of the monumental Guiomar Novaes, it would seem the soft rapture and the well known sensuality permeate the whole approach. In the case of Roberto Szidon, this statement seems to open parenthesis. His strong sound and digitations looks lie a bit clangorous, but most of the Liszt `s Hungarian Rhapsodies need it to guarantee this petulant sensation of omnipresence. Just remember Liszt was the embodiment of the thundering sound. Louis Moreau Gotschalk, Sigismund Thalberg and Charles Valentin Alkan follwed similar musical behavior. The piano should be simply a vehicle of expression; the torch for their fireworks.

Those are the main virtues of these piano pieces, loaded with expansive musculature and glittering arpeggios and theatrical sonority. To satisfy the great crowds of the XIX century, the piano had to be hammered to get and obtain the required applauses.

In this sense the Hungarian Rhapsodies established a profile where the incisiveness and exaggeration of the span should substitute the musicality. Rather than a musician you should play the role of a gladiator in scene, a typical device of thelast ashes of the late Romanticism.

Gyrogy Cziffra is possibly the best exponent of this old fashioned tradition, (without forget to Louis Kentner and Edith Franadi) but Szidon constitutes an excellent option for those purists of the great tradition.

This is a superb set, and surely still the top choice for the complete set of Hungarian Rhapsodies - which is not to deny that some of the greatest pianists of the past will not equal or surpass Szidon in individual pieces (Cziffra and Horowitz may be the most obvious candidates). Among the most obvious virtues are the textural clarity and the incisiveness of the rhythms, but even so Szidon may possible be at his best in the slower and more introvert sections. There is really little here by way of annoying idiosyncrasies (though some might find the performances a little impersonal for that very reason) but instead a remarkable clarity of vision and focus and ability to shape these sometimes structurally rambling works into complete architectural wholes (yes, I see that other reviewers accuse Szidon of idiosyncracies but I am a little unsure exactly why; I certainly do not hear excessive pedaling and rubato). The sound is also warm and clear and sympathetic. Maybe his reading of the most famous work of the set, the second rhapsody, might be among the least thoroughly convincing performances, but really, there is no way around this set if you find these colorful works as enjoyable as you should (which is not to say that you should miss out on Cziffra, but it is good to have these pieces played more or less as they were written as well).

Yes, I love the big thumping Cziffra with all the wrong notes and ignored markings. Great fun. But two hours of storming the piano keys can wear on the ear. So I also love this set too. #2, according to the Gramophone critic, is played as marked by Liszt- how can anyone argue with that? Liszt, your wrong in your own music? It will make you sit up and listen. Yes, if you have heard the big thumper it strikes the ear as wrong. That's more about intrepretations we have got used to. Not what his "right". There is perhaps more music in this set than Cziffra. It is quieter, more searching, even frenetic. I don't find it robotic at all. If anything, to me, it feels just as willful as Cziffra but in a different way, rhythms jump out and shift on a dime. Yet, I can see how the guy who wrote this became a monk later in life.

Biggest test: does it make me sit up and listen? Absolutely. Is it all of one piece? Yes.

Hi there,

I bought this CD from a local store and put it on right away to hear how it was. Well, I have to say that even from the first 2 minutes of the 2nd Rhapsody, I knew this was not a good recording. I am actually really surprised that DG even issued this recording seeing that it is really way below their standards.
I generally judge Rhapsodies by listening to the ones I know intimately. I had several Rhapsodies on several discs but wanted to get this one to have them all in one package. Well, to be honest, that was a bad decision. Playing is really not that good, there are strange tempo changes and strange dynamics choices.
Today I bought and listened to Cziffra's version for the FIRST time and boy, I was blown away. If you want a decent set which contains all of these works go with Cziffra (actually that set has 15 rhapsodies and the rhapsody espagnole).
If you want to hear some other great interpretations of this works, Philips's The Best of Liszt CD featuring Mischa Dichter is nothing short of jaw-dropping. I wish Mischa Dichter recorded all of them together.
I would not recommend this CD for the first time listeners of these works. It could be interesting for those who would like to listen to a different kind of interpretations of these works.

Szidon's interpretations (and they are very much interpretations) are downright weird. He messes with everything, it seems, just to sound different. The tempi are off, he adds awful cadenzas and other passages of his own, and misses the spirit of these pieces entirely. Of course, it was standard practice in Liszt's day not to play the notes as written. In fact, such was expected of any good pianist. But these interpretations are just willfully eccentric, and they destroy the music rather than enhance it. Buy the Jeno Jando versions on the Naxos label--they're cheaper and MUCH better.