Franz Liszt's transcriptions for piano of Beethoven's symphonies, depending how one looks at them, are either a major event in the history of orchestral music transcribed for the piano or a colossal waste of energy. In their time, they were highly useful for music lovers who had no access to a symphony orchestra and proved lucrative for Liszt, who transcribed some of them twice. In this disc, which constitutes Vol. 23 of Naxos' proposed complete edition of Liszt's piano music, pianist Konstantin Scherbakov turns in a highly ...
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Franz Liszt's transcriptions for piano of Beethoven's symphonies, depending how one looks at them, are either a major event in the history of orchestral music transcribed for the piano or a colossal waste of energy. In their time, they were highly useful for music lovers who had no access to a symphony orchestra and proved lucrative for Liszt, who transcribed some of them twice. In this disc, which constitutes Vol. 23 of Naxos' proposed complete edition of Liszt's piano music, pianist Konstantin Scherbakov turns in a highly dynamic and exciting performance of what appears to be the later, 1864, edition of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and his only one of the Symphony No. 8. Of the two transcriptions, the one of No. 7 seems the more successful in reproducing Beethoven's music as it is familiar to most while approximating its sound within the medium of the piano. While Liszt's re-thinking of the Symphony No. 8 in terms of the piano is a more than adequate basic representation of the work, his approach to...
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