Liszt: Dante Symphony, S 109 / Dante Sonata, S 161 No. 7

Franz Liszt (Composer), Daniel Barenboim (Conductor), Berlin Philharmonic (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Berlin Philharmonic
• Conductor: Daniel Barenboim
• Composer: Franz Liszt
• Audio CD (June 7, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Teldec
• ASIN: B000000SHX
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,112 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Dante Symphony, S 109 'Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina Commedia': I Inferno

2. Dante Symphony, S 109 'Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina Commedia': II Purgatorio

3. Dante Symphony, S 109 'Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina Commedia': Magnificat

4. Dante Sonata, S 161, No. 7 'Apres une lecture du Dante': Fantasia quasi Sonata

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Daniel Barenboim's best effort!, March 10, 2003

By 

Nelphy (Italia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Liszt: Dante Symphony, S 109 / Dante Sonata, S 161 No. 7 (Audio CD)

I have to confess that I don't like Daniel Barenboim as pianist very much. Especially, in Beethoven.
Anyway, I find "Dante Symphony" with him as conductor simply breathtaking!
Barenboim conducting here is really magnificent!
He expresses the horror of mournful damned, the unsufferable infernal tortures, and at the end, the Devil himself approaching to you! His "Inferno" is so full of demonic strenght, passion, the "Paolo e Francesca" noble episode is terrifing peaceful and idyllic. "Purgatorio" movement is so incredibly contemplative, mysterious, but what I find is really unbelievable is his "Magnificat"! The women chorus is so angelic and extremely pure,luminous, but also a little bit sorrowful. After all, is quite impossible to describe a place like this, especially for the miserable human being...
From the other hand, Liszt is more closer to the heaven than any other else!

To sum up, I warmly advice you to get this CD! Is much, much better than the Decca's one with Lopez-Cobos, as well as Sinopoli's one on Deutsche Grammophon.

Barenboim's great talent is shown just in this Symphony! I have also to praise him for having "discovered" this inexplicably neglected Liszt's Masterpiece. Bravo Daniel!

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Liszt's symphonic masterpiece, May 8, 2002

By 

Benjamin R. Garrison (Lynnwood, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Liszt: Dante Symphony, S 109 / Dante Sonata, S 161 No. 7 (Audio CD)

After reading an excellent biography about Franz Liszt by Alan Walker (a 3-volume effort well worth reading), I naturally became even more interested in Liszt's music. Liszt was a very generous, kind and religious man in addition to being a genius of musical romanticism in the 19th century. I was not disappointed with this performance. It is excellent and inspiring, plus it captures the essence of Dante's horrific and heavenly visions. Casting about for something negative to say about this CD, I can only come up with this: There are a couple of odd humming or grunting sounds (very subtle but audible) that can be heard in the opening movement (Inferno). My guess is the conductor (Barenboim) gets a bit carried away and forgets he's being recorded. Maybe it's not him....but after repeated listenings I sort of liked that he was so enamoured by the score that he joins in. Again, this is a trivial detail that I should perhaps not even mention.

Of the three movements, the 'Inferno' opening will probably be most instantly liked. The Paolo/Francesca love theme is only paralleled by Tchaikovsky's 'Francesca da Rimini.' No doubt Tchaikovsky was inspired by Liszt's work. Listen for the mocking harp at the end of the doomed lover's interlude. I didn't think harps could sound evil, but this one does. And the ending...wow...it contains an amalghem of intensely insane passions running amok. It is almost obscenely beautiful.

Purgatory is excellent and well played here. It is very contemplative and introspective in nature and I love it.

Liszt felt that no mortal could adequately capture Heaven, so he called the last movement "Magnificat." He was being too modest. It is gorgeous, wonderful music. Only Bach came as close to capturing it's nature. Buy this CD...I think you will agree.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars View from the Peak, March 6, 2011

By 

Jurgen Lawrenz (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Liszt: Dante Symphony, S 109 / Dante Sonata, S 161 No. 7 (Audio CD)

I've had a decades-long love-hate relationship with this music, but it won't let me go! But one result is that I've owned, over the years, almost every recording of it - including a real rarity, the Bolschoi Orchestra conducted by Boris Khaikin (pretty poor!).
I assess the difficulty of the Symphony as having very little to do with how it's played. Liszt's skills as an orchestrator were modest - that's part of the problem. Brahms' complaint against him rings true: he tends to forget the bass line, because as a pianist he was used to treating it as part of the virtuoso fabric, i.e. independently, whereas it should really serve as a support and foundation of the whole texture. The short of it is, that Liszt hardly ever writes a proper tutti, and so his score tends too often to sound thin - either in the middle or at the bottom. What conductors make of this, is the secret of a successful performance.
In that regard, I feel that Masur Liszt: Symphonic Poems had the measure of this work. Lisztians are likely to take note of the absence of hectic muddles, and especially of the brass sounding round and fat, rather than belching as in most other recordings. His slow movement is judiciously paced and the angels sound truly angelic. His recording portrays the music as MUSIC. To my mind an inestimable advantage that raises his version well above other contenders.
It is unfortunate that albums from the second rank far outnumber the really masterly ones. Although Sinopoli Liszt: Dante Symphonie comes in as a good second, his nervous approach and tub-thumping in the climaxes will not be to everyone's taste. At any rate it is still a superior reading, and until now the decision was really between these two outstanding performances.
Where does Barenboim fit in? In style and manner he is close to Sinopoli's approach (both live performances, whereas Masur is a studio recording). He makes a very grand affair of it. The Berlin and Dresden brass sound equally stunning; but I would give a marginal preference to Barenboim's strings - and I say Barenboim's, because here is the difference between these two conductors. The Berliners have a richer and mellower sound, and surely this work desperately needs softening in places! Barenboim also has a better feel for Liszt's Romanticism in the slow movement, I think, and the same applies to the final chorus.
Barenboim is better recorded as well, so the choice (even though by a slim margin) seems plain. It is complicated, however, by the fill-up. Sinopoli gives us two pieces from Busoni's Dr Faustus, whereas Barenboim plays the piano. His reading of the Dante Sonata is, I think, one of the best; but he recorded the same piece ever better on Deutsche Gramophon on a solo album containing a magnificent performance of the Sonata in B minor.
I'm inclined to put Barenboim's recording on the same level as Masur's. Two very different view of the same work, both indispensable.
(PS I find another reviewer claiming Edo de Waart's recording as THE BEST, in capital letters. It strikes me as vastly exaggerated, indeed incomprehensible. That recording is hardly in the same league as the object under discussion today).