Name: LISZT, PÄRT // For a minimalist piano
SKU: LDV 46
Price: 20.00 EUR
Availability: InStock

1 CD | LDV 46 | total duration: 74'44 | release date: 31/08/2015

LISZT, PÄRT // For a minimalist piano

Vanessa Wagner,

20,00 €

Performing and recording the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses is a real initiatory journey, which runs the gamut from extreme austerity to supreme ecstasy. I played these pieces a fair number of times before I recorded them. It’s music that requires a long period of maturation, because, over and above virtuosity, it demands an inner development on the part of the interpreter, an almost philosophical voyage of introspection.

2018, Liszt, Pärt, Piano, Vanessa Wagner

Booklet

Description

This programme isn’t based on a musicological argumentoronthedesirefora‘concept’.BetweenLiszt’s luxuriant textures and Pärt’s economy of resources, there is of course a whole world of difference. But, for me, the link between these two artists is obvious: they share a certain form of spirituality, which transcends their period and their mode of expression. Arvo Pärt is one of the greatest composers of minimal music. Für Alina, one of his best-known piano pieces, gets me into raptures every time. In his life as in his music, he asserts a powerful religious sentiment. In the case of Liszt, who was so profound a believer as to retire to a monastery, one feels the same great fervour, which is akin to a form of transcendence.

This programme leads us far into the realm of introspection and personal quest, by means of an almost ecstatic experience or a kind of dialogue with oneself.

Franz LISZT // Poetic and Religious Harmonies S173

Invocation 6’55
Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude 16’57

Arvo PÄRT

Trivium 6’07

Franz LISZT

Visions mournful 14’10

Arvo PÄRT

Pari Intervallo 3’42

Franz LISZT

Hymne de l’enfant à son réveil 5’49
Funeral 6’12
Andante lagrimoso 11’31

Arvo PÄRT

Für Alina 3’15

PATRICK RUCKER

From the opening bars of ‘Invocation’, we are confronted by frenetic rhetoric which, undergirded with a rubato verging on hysteria, threatens incoherence … Wagner is clearly more at home in the more intimate sound worlds of Pärt. Her Liszt interpretations, on the other hand, seem filled with the very qualities that she says made his music so difficult to assimilate.

Described by the daily newspaper Le Monde as ‘the most delightfully individual pianist of her generation’, Vanessa Wagner pursues a career in her own image, rigorous, original and committed, mixing classical recitals, contemporary creation, performance on historical instruments, and chamber music.

Over the past few years, she has instigated numerous transversal collaborations and creations, reaching out to electronic music, dance, video and poetry.

Ever since winning a Victoire de la Musique in 1999, she has performed all over the world, as soloist or with orchestra, at the leading festivals and as a regular guest of concert halls that are faithful to her year after year.

She is deeply committed to the music of her time, and is the dedicatee of several pieces by such composers as Pascal Dusapin, François Meïmoun, Amy Crankshaw and Alex Nante.

Vanessa Wagner’s extensive discography has received many distinctions from the specialised press, which acclaims her sober, eloquent playing, her intense sensibility and her richly expressive touch.

Her broad and constantly renewed repertory is the mirror of an ever-alert personality, patiently weaving bonds between worlds that are too often shut off from each other.

Since 2010 Vanessa Wagner has been director of the Festival de Chambord, where she devises an eclectic programme. She was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2020.