Liszt: The Franciscan Works Sandro Ivo Bartoli

• Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886):
• 1 Liszt: Deux légendes, S. 175: I. Saint François d'Assise. La prédication aux oiseaux. 09:46
• 2 Liszt: Deux légendes, S. 175: II. Saint François de Paule. Marchant sur les flots. 08:37
• 3 Liszt: San Francesco. Preludio per il Cantico del Sol di San Francesco d'Assisi, S. 498c 04:52
• 4 Liszt: Cantico di San Francesco, S. 499 11:28
• 5 Liszt: Alleluia et Ave Maria, S. 183: I. Alleluia 03:27
• 6 Liszt: Alleluia et Ave Maria, S. 183: II. Ave Maria d'Arcadelt 05:07
• 7 Liszt: Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este, S. 163/4 08:20
• 8 Liszt: Miserere d'après Palestrina, S. 173/8 04:04
• 9 Liszt: Ave Maria, S. 182 "Die Glocken von Rom" 05:41
• Total Runtime 01:01:22

Info for Liszt: The Franciscan Works

It came as a surprise to many when pianist Sandro Ivo Bartoli, one of Italy’s most charismatic and willful musicians, moved from London to a small farm in Tuscany, producing his own food and withdrawing to the countryside. Instead of ending his career, however, the decision provided him with the time and calm required to focus on his studies and typically untypical interests. His latest recording is the first result of this move. Bringing together the mysterious Franciscan repertoire of Franz Liszt on one disc for the very first time, Bartoli is awarding his personal touch to the work of one of the most misunderstood composers – you have never heard these pieces performed like this.

The 13th album of his 20-year long recording career sees Bartoli diving headlong into the darkest period in the life of Liszt. Faced with the death of his daughter and flirting with suicide, battling with illness and out of grace with the critics, it was faith alone that kept the composer afloat. In what many perceived to be a publicity stunt, Liszt put on the robes of a Franciscan monk, gave away most of his fortune to charity and began writing in a daring and utterly unique style, somewhere at the cusp between order and chaos, tonal tradition and sonic freedom. Blending passages of massive sound clusters with breathtaking beauty and impressionist color painting, even some of his closest friends and supporters were lost with many of these pieces.

To our 21st century ears, meanwhile, they appear entirely original and fresh, from the sequencer-like arpeggios of “Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este” to the ten-minute epic “St. Francis Walking on the Water”. Recorded at the legendary Reitstadel concert hall near Nuremberg in a single day, the album strikingly marries years of experience with the spontaneity and intensity of a live performance. He may be dealing with darkness here – but Bartoli has never sounded more alive.

The lasting impression is of the uniting of two visionary artistic voices – composer and pianist aligned in a single-minded purpose. […] Few if any Liszt programmes have made quite the impression on me than this one has. With a remarkable fine piano sound, Solaire’s plush presentation with a sturdy box to house both the jewel case and voluminous texts in a separate booklet, this is a highly rewarding object of desire.” (MusicWeb International)

Sandro Ivo Bartoli, piano

Sandro Ivo Bartoli
Heralded by the German press as «one of the most important musicians to have come out of Italy in the last three decades», Sandro Ivo Bartoli is a virtuoso pianist whose sumptuous playing has captivated audiences all over the world. A graduate of the Florence State Conservatory and the Royal Academy of Music in London, he collaborated privately with Russian piano legend Shura Cherkassky, who was instrumental in the beginning of his international career. In the early 1990s, with Cherkassky’s encouragement, Mr Bartoli began to rediscover the Italian piano literature of the early twentieth century, soon establishing a trend and becoming its leading interpreter world-wide. In addition to the concertos of Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti and Petrassi, in 1995 he gave the first modern performance in the United States of Respighi’s Toccata for piano and orchestra in an historic concert that was broadcast by PBS in the series ‘Great Performances’. In Europe, he toured extensively with orchestras such as The Philharmonia, the Hallé, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the stockholm String ensembles and the Max- Bruch Philharmonie, working with conductors such as Peter Stangel, Nicolae Moldoveanu, Michele Carulli, Simon Wright, Vladimir Lande and Gianluigi Zampieri among others.

Mr Bartoli’s playing has been praised for the kaleidoscopic range of its tone colour and its breath-taking virtuosity, attributes that he brings also to the better known repertoire of the classical and romantic eras such as the concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Franck, Rachmaninov, Shostakovitch and Tchajkovskij. Notable solo appearances include concerts at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, at the Gasteig in Munich (where he performed alongside such giants as Martha Argerich and Rodion Shchedrin), and at the Festival d’Avignon, Brighton Festival, Grieg Festival in Bergen, and the GAMO Festival of contemporary music in Florence.

Recent engagements have included Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto in Dresden, Liszt’s Malédiction concerto in Munich, Chopin’s Second Concerto in Grosseto, Mozart’s ‘Jeunehomme’ Concerto in Milan, as well as appearances on Radio Nacional Clàsica Argentina, Radio Nacional Española, the Icelandic Radio, and Radio Muzical Romania in a huge active repertoire that has seen Mr Bartoli perform no less than ten piano concertos and over seven hours of solo music in the 2012-2013 season alone. His discography comprises the complete concertos of Gian Francesco Malipiero with the Radio Orchestra of Saarbrücken (CPO, winner of the Diapason d’Or 2008), works for piano and orchestra of Ottorino Respighi with the State Orchestra of Saxony (Brilliant Classics, 2011), the First Piano Concerto of Erik Lotichius with the Academic Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg (Navona, 2013), and solo albums devoted to the music of Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Percy Grainger, Frédéryk Chopin, Ferruccio Busoni, and ‘The Frescobaldi Legacy’ (Brilliant Classics, 5 de Diapason, 2013). In 2014, Brilliant Classics will release Mr Bartoli’s complete recording of the Bach-Busoni transcriptions. Mr Bartoli is the protagonist of two documentary films, ‘Mood Indigo’ (Nu Films, Amsterdam, 2013) and ‘Pianiste-Interpréte’ (Salto Films, Paris, 2014). For his outstanding work in the Arts, the City of Turin has awarded him the Gina Rosso Prize. He lives in his native Tuscany.

Booklet for Liszt: The Franciscan Works