Live contemplation about and to Franz Liszt. “Under the auspices of a new foundation, the Ruhr Piano Festival remains loyal to its tradition of annually publishing a three-CD boxed set containing highlights from our most recent season. Our programme in 2011 naturally took place under the sign of the great Franz Liszt, commemorating his 200th birthday. Thus, two CD’s in this set contain outstanding renditions of music written by that true titan of the piano.

Igor Levit’s début performance at the Festival was overwhelming: it included one of Liszt’s Petrarch sonnets and the rarely heard Hexaméron. Benjamin Moser sent the audience into raptures with his renditions of Funérailles and Isoldes Liebestod. Boris Giltburg, 2nd Prize at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition (2011), performed the Leggierezza étude. Denis Kozhukhin, 1st Prize at the Concours Reine Elisabeth (2010), featured Liszt’s Bénédiction and Tarantella; The second CD contains several of Liszt’s rarely performed chamber music works. They include Anthony & Joseph Paratore’s two-piano performance of the Sonata in B Minor as arranged by Saint-Saëns, as well as Liszt’s own arrangement of Vallée d’Obermann for piano trio, played by Kit Armstrong, Andrej Bielow and Adrian Brendel. Liszt was featured as a master of paraphrases and transcriptions by Andrea Lucchesini (piano) and Mario Brunello (cello); portions of Liszt’s fascinating artsong output were sung by mezzo-soprano Marina Prudenskaya, accompanied by Irina Puryshinskaja.

This year, as always, our Bonus CD contains world premiere performances of new piano music (CD 3). Incidentally, all compositions featured here were commissioned by the Ruhr Piano Festival. Kit Armstrong (piano), Andrej Bielow (violin) and Adrian Brendel (cello) offered a special present to Alfred Brendel for his 80th birthday: Armstrong’s new composition Time flies like an arrow. Olav Lervik and Vassos Nicolaou each celebrated György Kurtág’s 85th birthday by writing several new piano pieces in his honour, premiered by Tamara Stefanovich at the closure recital of one of our Education Projects on 31 May 2011. Siegfried Mauser performed Dieter Schnebel’s own B Minor Sonata.” (Preface on the release by the Indendant Franz-Xaver Ohnesorg 2011)