Review by JJ November 3, 2013 (3 of 3 found this review helpful)
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Here is a recording, dedicated to Richard Wagner, which is out of the ordinary and will be remembered as one of the most pertinent tributes to the German composer. These arrangements for piano of celebrated pages taken from his operas are rarely heard, or even played. The program has been prepared with intelligence, avoiding the obligatory nod to Franz Liszt for this kind of exercise. As pianist Severin von Eckarden notes: “Examining other theatrical interpretations and themes from Wagner’s operas, made accessible thanks to the piano, and more precisely those of Wagnerians of early époques, seemed to me to be quite an interesting task.” We can thus hear five excerpts from “L’Anneau du Nibelung,” by Louis Brassin (1840-1884), the famous funeral march from “Götterdämmerung” by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), two excerpts from “Parsifal” signed August Stradal (1860-1930), the “"Liebestod” by Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925), and closer in time to us a transcription by Sidney Corbett (1860) based on “Parsifal,” dedicated to the composer Hans Werner Henze, as well as another taken from “Tristan und Isolde” by the pianist Zoltan Kocsis (1952). All of this is exciting and performed with fervor by Severin von Eckarden, whose inspired playing should be unanimously applauded.
Jean-Jacques Millo Translation Lawrence Schulman
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