Franz Liszt Russell Sherman Earl Wild - Liszt Masterpieces for Solo Piano Vol 2 (18 tracks) +Album Reviews

Pianism of first order!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 04/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Having bought this album on the old vinyl format in the middle seventies, I found it very pleasant to listen, because as all we know, Earl Wild is much more than a simple virtuous keyboard player. His musical thoughts may be felt in every single track.

On the other hand Earl Wild and Michael Ponti are at this moment the only survivors of the last Romantic School and that means we are in front the last exponents of a musical tradition.

In the case of Russell Scherman I find him a very solvent piano player. His [...] is clean and precise and he possesses that required technique to shine with those hard to play piano works.

So take this statement into account when you decide to bet for this golden CD, because the final result is even better than the sum of the parts. Absolutely recommended.

"

Excellent

Dean Brown | Princeton, NJ USA | 02/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I bought this CD set for the second disk - Earl Wild's Demonic Liszt, which I could not find seperately. The Demonic is astonishing in every way, and will only satisfy. Don Juan has never been played like this, IMHO.

The other disk is Russel Sherman's Transcendental Etudes. Now, though my favorite version of this set is Claudio Arrau's, Mr Sherman's rendition is this: If you ever wanted to slow down a piece of piano music and actually hear all the fine detail, this is the version for you! And although it's very very slow, there is a magnificent touch, making this a most enjoyable set. If ever you wanted to learn a piece and need to hear it in slow motion, try this for size! 5 stars.

-Dean"

Earl Wild's "The Demonic Liszt" is a must-have, but...

SwissDave | Switzerland | 12/30/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The reason, I'll admit it, I bought this set was because I finally wanted a copy of Earl Wild's "The Demonic Liszt", one of the handful greatest Liszt discs, and by far one of Earl Wild's finest overall (whoever finds him mechanically fleet if not interpretatively superficial at times needs to hear this - virtuosic and music-making at its best). The 1968 sound quality needs no excuse: this might pass for an audiophile recording (which, ironically, it was not universally considered to be back when it was first marketed).

Russell Sherman's recording of the 12 Transcendental Studies was new to me, and now that I have listened to it for a number of times, I can say without malice that he does pull about (and apart) most of the faster sections and does best in the slower ones ("Paysage", "Recordanza" and "Harmonies du Soir" are quite memorable, if also mannered and stretched in places, when it's Sherman's ruminative bass notes rather than a stop-and-go sense of rhythm that form the glue that keeps it all from falling to pieces), and willfully so, since there can be no doubt that technically, he can do whatever he likes on the keyboard. But, and it's a big BUT: inventiveness or an intended contrary of boredom is NOT the equal of manipulation! Such outlandishness may be fun in the concert hall (and believe me, I would be ever so glad to hear some idiosyncracy at piano recitals rather than the polished risk-aversion we seem to get too much of nowadays), but it wears off all too quickly on disc, and becomes tiring with repeated listening. The 1974 sound quality is a bit close, drier and more variable, but perfectly acceptable. For a benchmark complete version of the Transcendental Studies, Claudio Arrau's remains a safe bet, and of course there are countless great recordings of (almost) all of the individual pieces out there.

In a nutshell: I'm not sure Vanguard does the customer a service by "forcing" us to buy an interesting, but at the very least controversial recording along with a justly famous one, but then, one gets two for the price of one, so perhaps one shouldn't complain after all. In fact, Wild's "Reminiscences de Robert le Diable" alone would be worth the price of this set (don't know a better "Gnomenreigen" or "Mephisto Polka" either, and Wild's "Mephisto Waltz" - not the same as the 1967 Reader's Digest one, by the way, prefer this one - and "Reminiscences de Don Juan" are among the finest and, since not in historical/archival but full-bodied sound, best-recorded on disc).

Greetings from Switzerland, David."

Earl Wild & Russell Sherman play Liszt: Astounding, More tha

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 05/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Just when it seemed as if Vanguard recordings were consigned to a golden labels recording past in classical music, somebody who cared seems to have gotten the rights and is busy re-issuing treasure after treasure from the old Vanguard and other master tape vaults. Among the first fruits of this production love affair must be counted the Bruce Hungerford tapes of incredible Beethoven, and these tapes of solo piano music by Franz Liszt.

You should probably get both of these while they are still re-released, because if history tells us anything about them, we realize that they will disappear again from the catalogues despite their high excellence.

Earl Wild has had a long and distinguished keyboard career that somehow still hasn't quite become visible. Like that other great American secret, Abbey Simon, he has been talked up among the cognoscenti without hitting it big time in the music headlines. No matter. What you get in this set is a re-release of his amazing Liszt. Clear eyed as Virgil Thomson's music, these performances will surprise a listener, not least by making such cogent business out of what Liszt was saying to us as a Late Romantic composer. This is big, strong, feeling music that Wild performs expertly as if to the Grand Manner born, yet entirely dispensing with languors, catatonias, swoons, and other antebellum fits of the vapors.

As if that were not reason enough, the other disc in this set re-releases the even more astounding performance of the Liszt etudes that reminded us of another master, inivisible to the international brand names classical music machine. That is, Russell Sherman.

Like Wild, Sherman has keyboard technique to burn, and nothing seems impossible when either artist plays. Think Volodos or Horowitz, then, if you do not already know them first hand.

Sherman graduated from Columbia at nineteen with a degree firmly in hand, and his incisive intelligence sets fire to the entire transcendental cycle, piece after piece after piece. As much as any other recorded version, Sherman's performance lays out the whole genius that Liszt is, detailed, compleat, and involving. There is fire in this music, even fire of volcanic intensities, but it burns bright and clean and smudgeless.

Combined, Earl Wild and Russell Sherman reveal a sort of American high plains and New England genius. We are reminded of the New England mystics and transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau and Ives, in good company with the wide open plain-speaking of poets like Robert Frost.

The miracle is that all of this was caught on master tapes in the first place, and now it is available again for the time being. Don't hesitate. You will not be sorry. Highly recommended. Only five stars?"

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