Artist: Llŷr Williams
Title: Wagner Without Words
Year Of Release: 2014
Label: Signum Records
Genre: Classical
Quality: FLAC {Tracks, 24bit/96kHz}, booklet pdf
Total Time: 02:22:39 min
Total Size: 2,1 Gb
Pianist Llyr Williams explores Wagner’s rich and evocative sound-world from a different perspective. Featuring insightful arrangements of Richard Wagner’s operas by Franz Liszt and Glenn Gould (as well as Williams’ own arrangement of music from Parsifal), at the centre of the programme is a selection of Wagner’s own piano pieces – many of which were written earlier in his compositional career, hinting at the grand operatic masterworks which were yet to come.
Wagner's operas have inspired innumerable piano transcriptions from Carl Tausig to Zoltan Kocsis but those to which pianists most frequently turn are by Liszt. to the half dozen of these Llyr Williams has selected, he adds three more: his own arrangements of Glenn Gould's Siegfried's Rhine Journey and Prelude to Die Meistersinger transcriptions as well as his own version of three scenes from Parsifal. It makes for a varied and rewarding programme enriched by Williams's velvet touch, meticulous voicing, attention to detail and judiciously graded dynamics. For me, he is at his best in the music from Parsifal (his transcription of the Good Friday Music is not dissimilar to that by Joseph Rubinstein), quite beautifully realised, as is the spaciously phrased Liebestod and the less familiar (but no less powerful) 'Santo spirito cavaliere' from Rienzi. What I miss in Williams's playing is that last ounce of tension and sense of mounting excitement (Entry of the Guests and Die Meistersinger). Here and in his delivery of the Spinning Chorus (compare with the carefree Paderewski on his famous 1924 recording), accuracy and caution do not take him far enough beyond the printed page. Williams punctuates the transcriptions with some of Wagner's original piano works (he admits that he learnt of their existence, surprisingly, only last year). If you too are one of those unaware that the Sorcerer of Bayreuth wrote anything for piano then you haven't missed anything. The interminable Fantasy, Op 3, written as a 19-year-old, dribbles along with bits of second-hand Bach, Weber and Mendelssohn popping up here and there, underpinned by a portentous Beethovenian solemnity. Stephan Moller in his 1992 recording (Koch, 6/93) takes a livelier view of this, though cannot compete with Williams's tonal finesse. The five other mercifully shorter works, no more than period curios, confirm the wisdom of Wagner's decision to leave piano composition and transcriptions to his father-in-law. --Gramophone
Tracklist:
01. Tannhäuser: Entry of the Guests (Arr. Franz Liszt) (10:39)
02. Fantasy (26:01)
03. Flying Dutchman: Spinning Chorus (Arr. Franz Liszt) (6:30)
04. Albumblatt für Ernst Benedikt Kietz: “Song without Words” (Arr. Franz Liszt) (1:50)
05. Lohengrin: Elsa’s Bridal Procession (Arr. Franz Liszt) (9:07)
06. Zürich Waltzes (1:09)
07. Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s Rhine-Journey (Arr. Glenn Gould, Llŷr Williams) (13:22)
08. Tristan and Isolde: Liebestod (Arr. Franz Liszt) (7:51)
09. Parsifal: Transformation Music (Arr. Llŷr Williams) (8:35)
10. Parsifal: Parsifal and the Flower Maidens (Arr. Llŷr Williams) (6:22)
11. Parsifal: Good Friday Music (Arr. Llŷr Williams) (6:25)
12. In das Album der Fürstin M. (2:55)
13. Rienzi: Santo spirito cavaliere (Arr. Franz Liszt) (9:35)
14. Sonata for the Book of Mrs. M. W. (12:47)
15. Ring of the Nibelungen: Walhall (Arr. Franz Liszt) (5:47)
16. Albumblatt for Mrs. Betty Schott (4:29)
17. The Meistersinger from Nürnberg: Prelude (Arr. Glenn Gould, Llŷr Williams) (9:14)
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