Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

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!

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.

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).

I really wouldn't like to have to choose between Barenboim's and Sinopoli's recordings of Liszt's 'Dante' Symphony. They are extremely different, yet both are totally compelling; which is indeed another proof that great music surely lends itself to a great variety of interpretations. Just about the only thing both recordings have in common is that both are live performances that were recorded in 1990s: Sinopoli in 1994, Barenboim in 1992. Otherwise differences abound - orchestras, recording locations, labels, temperaments - and the couple makes a fascinating study of contrasts.

Generally and very superficially speaking, Barenboim is more at home in the infernal moments (the outer parts of the 'Inferno'), whereas Sinopoli is more memorable in the haunting lyrical sections (the middle part of 'Inferno', more or less the whole 'Purgatorio' and of course the Magnificat). But this is definitely an oversimplification; Barenboim does tend to rush the poetry and Sinopoli occasionally underplays the Hell, but neither gets carried away, ever. Sinopoli is more on the slow side, and more consistently so, paying more attention to details, while Barenboim prefers more fluctuating tempi and is not bothered by a little lack of clarity as long as the excitement is there. TELDEC have given Barenboim and the Berliners stupendous sound, equally fine to that supplied by DG for Staatskapelle Dresden under Sinopoli's baton. I venture a suggestion that the great difference in the sound may at least partly be due to the recording location. As usual for anything recorded in the Dresden Semperoper (and listened there live, for that matter), the brass often sounds as if you can catch it out of the speakers and cut it with a knife; fortunately, Sinopoli is a sensitive musician who knew both the orchestra and the acoustics only too well to make any blunders. In contrast, Barenboim's recording was made, not in the Philharmonie as one might expect, but the Schauspielhaus, and I guess this is why his sound is much heavier, more sumptuous and with somewhat blurred details. (Compared this with the sound of the 1994 recording by Eliahu Inbal and the RSO Berlin of Liszt's 'Faust' Symphony at the same place.) Ultimately, of course, the greatest difference is due to the different temperaments of Barenboim and Sinopoli. We do need them both.

The disappointment on the Barenboim's disc is the filler. Admittedly, the excerpts from Busoni's 'Doktor Faustus' on Sinopoli's disc are pretty mediocre stuff too, but they are at least orchestral. Now Liszt's Dante Sonata, being a work for solo piano, is a decidedly odd choice to couple with a symphony for full orchestra. Besides, apart from the titles, and presumably the inspiration for composition, both works hardly have anything in common. Last but not least, strange as it may seem, much as I like Barenboim as a conductor, I thoroughly dislike his performances at the piano. His ponderous and mannered Dante Sonata is, alas, no exception. Moreover, though recorded digitally in 1985, the sound is tremendously artificial indeed.

No matter. Forgetting completely the entirely forgetful Dante Sonata, Barenboim's 'Dante' Symphony stands out as one of the finest ever recorded. Sinopoli's subtle interpretation and mind-blowing sound remain my first choice, but I definitely wouldn't want to be without Barenboim's passionate rendition, either. Five full stars. Highly recommended for everybody who really cares about the orchestral music of Franz Liszt.

The Dante Symphony is one of the few pieces that I had not yet exchanged from LP into CD. It has been a rewarding move. With Daniel Barenboim as Conductor directing the Berlin Philharmonic on a Teldec label it seemed that I could not go wrong and I was proven right. It is a beeautiful, transparent recording makes this music overwhelming. The timpani are in the back, violins on the left, celli and bass on the right; it feels that you are in the concert hall. I remember hearing the Dante Symphony life in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the hall in darkness and the music scores lit up only by candles. So light up some candles in your room put on this CD and enjoy Liszt's storytelling, beautifully orchestrated music.

This is the "Dante" Symphony to beat. I've never heard a better performance, either live or on record. Highest recommendation.

This recording is good, but James Conlon's version on the Erato Label is THE BEST, thus far, and the one to beat. This is unquestionably a major masterpiece by Liszt and along with the Faust Symphony they are the most advanced harmonically and profound emotionally of all symphonies penned in the Mid-Romantic Era. Daniel's Dante sonata is down right dull, and since other versions of the symphony are superior and since the other reviewers here kicked the overall vote way too high I must give it 2 stars. It could have gotten 3 otherwise.