Search - Liszt, Jerome Rose :: Harmonies: Legendes: Consolations: Weihnachtsbaum

Powerful, leonine, granitic, very American

Charlus | NYC | 12/13/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Harmonies Poétiques et religieuses, Franz Liszt's cycle of religiously inspired pieces, underwent numerous transformations before arriving at its definitive form, first published in 1853. It is in two sets, Searle catalog ## 154 and 173.



This Jerome Rose collection contains, along with the rarely heard Christmas Tree album (S 186,) the complete seven-piece S 173 (Second) set of HARMONIES POETIQUES ET RELIGIEUSES, which includes the popular Funérailles and, best of all, Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude.



Jerome Rose recorded the whole two collections for VOX, and it is a pity that only the second set is hereby available. Rose is not a notably colouristic or supple player, so that the iridescent and multi-silvered tone of a Jorge Bolet or even a Horowitz is not to be heard or expected here. What Rose has is enormous force and power, a truly titanic tone and grip at all speeds. That tone is occasionally rough around the edges (or is it the recording?) but never lacking in Lisztian grandeur. It is useless to compare him to a György Cziffra: that would be like comparing a huge overweight lion (Rose) to a sleek, fierce cheetah (Cziffra.) Rose also has a sense of sustained phrasing, so that, within his Mount Rushmore sense of things, he is quite a player; more celtic bard than Italian sonnet-writer perhaps, but a poet, too. His playing is very impressive, in an American sort of way. At any rate, of the alternatives (TWO anonymous English accountants on Hyperion, a Mad Englishman on Naxos and a dead Englishman also on VOX) Jerome Rose is the only way to avoid perfidious Albion.



Seriously: Philip Thomson on NAXOS would be my first recommendation for the whole collection of Harmonies, but I respect and have a great deal of affection for Louis Kentner and Jerome Rose, two artists of enormous probity, on VOX.

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