Liszt: Unrivalled
Michael Kaykov (piano)
rec. 2021, Skillman Music, New York, USA
Odradek ODRCD428 [62]
I had not heard of young American pianist Michael Kaykov, perhaps because he is mainly a published scholar with a doctoral thesis on Scriabin, and a university teacher. Much of his wide repertoire comes from the virtuoso pianist/composers, Liszt, Scriabin and Rachmaninov, but he would not fail Glenn Gould’s test of young pianists focussed on the spectacle of difficult repertory. Gould said: “a Bach two-part invention would soon find them out”. Kaykov plays plenty of Bach, and much else.
This Liszt recital has the great B minor Sonata as its centrepiece. A good range of other genres, including transcriptions and some late pieces, surround it. The disc’s title seems justified insofar as the Sonata is considered unrivalled as Liszt’s greatest work for the instrument, perhaps his greatest of all. In one continuous movement, with only a few motifs developed and transformed, with sections that serve as a slow movement and as a scherzo, the Sonata is densely unified yet offers the variety expected in a multi-movement work. Apart from mastering the technical difficulties, the pianist has to make the work appear coherent over its typical half-hour run. The earlier generations did regard it as almost incoherent.
Pianist Kenneth Hamilton, who wrote the book on the Liszt Sonata (literally – the Cambridge Music Handbook, 1996), gave the BBC Radio 3 “Building a Library” a comparison of numerous recordings. He said that 30 minutes was about the upper limit of acceptability for a satisfying rendition of the work. His account, taking 27:15, was widely praised (review). Shorter playing time is not achieved just by faster playing of the fast music in works of this size, but also by less indulgence in the pauses, rubato and in tempi for the slow passages. The swiftest that I know is Leslie Howard’s reading, merely 24:03 ( in his monumental complete recording of all Liszt’s solo piano music on Hyperion), fast but still compellingly eloquent.
Kaykov, with 26:36, gives a fine account of the piece, brisk in the opening swift flourishes, but with good articulation and convincing transitions between the motifs. He has the technique for Liszt but never deploys it to obscure the trajectory of a passage, so the long narrative unfolds convincingly. The slow section is poetically played, but kept flowing. The fugato passage – the work’s short scherzo – is fleet-fingered and clean, so that the delights of the contrapuntal detail come through, and those final formidable octaves are stirring. The quiet envoi sets the seal on a very good performance. It may not displace your current favourite versions of the work recorded by so many great pianists, but it is a fitting centrepiece to this programme.
The recital is bookended by transcriptions, an aspect of Liszt’s art maybe too easily overlooked. Beethoven’s Op 48 sets six songs to poems by Christian Gellert. Liszt resequenced them into Sechs geistliche Lieder von Gellert [six spiritual songs by Gellert]. Kaykov plays the first and third. Gottes Macht und Vorsehung [God’s might and providence] lasts just over a minute, but Kaykov invests it with some nobility. (One wonders why Liszt did not extend the arrangement somewhat: Beethoven’s Lied gives the singer another fifteen verses to choose repeats from.) Busslied [song of penitence] is more substantial at over four minutes. It also has a more independent piano part, especially in the later stages, and Beethoven has given it an aria-like elaboration. It is the only song he gives Italian rather than German markings. Kaykov plays Liszt’s embellishments with no little relish.
Valse de concert sur deux motifs de Lucia et Parisina de Donizetti is a much more typical Liszt transcription, drawing on the stage rather than the cloister. Liszt combined contrapuntally two waltzes from Donizetti’s operas. Kaykov’s fine playing has the drama and atmosphere of the opera house.
The Scherzo and March S.177 have the reputation as notoriously taxing to play, with fast speeds and repeated notes among other virtuoso devices. That seems to hold no terrors for Kaykov, who surmounts the challenges with high skill, even aplomb. The work should be better known, even if takes much time to master, and perhaps this recording will advance its cause. It deserves to.
Three short pieces from Liszt’s late period round off the programme. Nuages gris [grey clouds] and Unstern! [unfortunate] are both from 1881. Kaykov evokes their unmistakeable modernity with authority, and confirms claims made for Liszt’s position at the forefront of radical developments in musical language. La lugubre gondola is from 1882-1883 in the second version played here. Spending time with Wagner in Venice in 1882, Liszt was fascinated by the black-draped funeral gondolas. He saw this piece as a premonition of Wagner’s death in Venice the next year. Its harmonic ambiguity has an appropriate bleakness, which the pianist unsparingly evokes.
The recording is in good atmospheric stereo. The piano has a sound range from the delicate and evocative to the thunderous, at the climax of Unstern! for example. The booklet notes (in English, French and German) are clear and helpful but brief when discussing less familiar pieces. Some of the eight very similar photographs of Michael Kaykov in concert dress might make way for more text. But this is a valuable recital. It covers several types from the Liszt’s vast solo output, and it does justice to each of the different styles.
Roy Westbrook
Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI and helps us keep free access to the site
Contents
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
1-2. Sechs geistliche Lieder von Gellert, S.467, an arrangement of Sechs Lieder nach Gedichten von Gellert, Op 48 by Ludwig van Beethoven
Gottes Macht und Vorsehung (No 1)
Busslied (No 3)
3. La lugubre gondola, S.200 No 1
4. Scherzo und Marsch, S.177
5. Nuages gris, S.199
6. Piano Sonata in B minor, S.178
7. Unstern! S.208
8. Caprices-Valses, S. 214: III. Valse de concert sur deux motifs de Lucia et Parisina de Donizetti
