Classical Music for Aficionados

This version rival any other great one i know of indeed...It is very delicate and poetical interpretation...the drama is interiorized...

Save for only one version nobody exceed anyway and which is in a class of his own but a version "sound purist" dont always love because too volcanic and too powerful playing by "Liszt reincarnated" for Hungarian People...

Angelich is with Lupu a giant for me...

This piece is the key to Liszt soul...Many versions are welcome...

And Liszt is one the greatest underestimated composers there is because of his Christus among other works, which is the only oratorio with the Messiah for me rivaling Bach Passion...

Liszt deeply influenced Bruckner with Shubert through this oratorio who rival even the Greatest Mass of Bruckner himself... So astounding that the first time i listened to it i was out of my chair and never understood at the first listening the majestic simplicity of Liszt devotion and his mastering of symphonic orchestration chorus and soloists so great and purified and refined to a a truly celestial perfection that nobody ever exceed it for me among any composers.. He unite the most moving simplicity with the peak of glory which is an impossible task and union save in Paradise... I think Liszt conversion was really a spiritual one...

.. i owned four version of this three hours work... 😁😊

It is the life of Christ told by angels in heaven after the resurrection for me ...Not a Passion at all...

It is like the Art of the Fugue by Bach, the only work i know at the same heights of perfection on all counts form and content which put almost any other works under them save few truly inspired spiritual works...

I am ashamed to say i discovered Listz only late in life...Too great for my small mind and heart it seems, i was not ready ...I dont joke here...This work humble us...

It is useless to put a link to this 3 hours work and feel the right impression without immersing ourself in it...You cannot judge the Himalaya from below...

 The only work for me that rival Liszt Christus is not his marvellous choral works so great they are indeed, but his 5 th symphony...Incredible work underestimated to this day, because the beauty of his other symphonies  are easier to catch at first listening... But no one ever write a symphony so perfect in content and form with a so intense spiritual experience hidden in it i put it beside the cHristus and the Art of the fugue... The Bruckner  9 th symphony for example  so deep, beautiful it is and it is rival  almost any symphonic  piece ever written, lack the purified, refined spiritual perspective over  the cosmos itself and over all life there is in the 5th...  A great critic in the 10 century say it all : "this is to the symphony art what the art of the fugue is to the klavier "...

Jim204 , I Was going to say that Lupu was THE Schubert  pianist . But every one 

knows  I am a Schubert freak  and  perhaps It would not go over well at his death .

BUT our Scottish  Icon of all things pianist did it for me.

I have every Lupu  of Schubert that  is (I think) and IMO no reason to play anything else !

@jim5559    My dear friend I agree with you one hundred percent, his Schubert is as if God himself is at his back and willing him on to give nothing other than life itself on a palette of 88 keys, such was his genius.

Some people are saying this and that pianist produced the best tone, I have been to many many live concerts and believe me live is the only way you can judge a pianist. The pianist who is number one for me was Claudio Arrau whose tone could be a soft whisper or an earth shattering roar but never once with a rough tone. He was like the old pianists like Rachmaninov or Hoffman who were quiet at the piano not for them the histrionics of hand waving and tragic faces , even Horowitz hardly betrayed his playing and not portraying todays penchant for playing with evermore hand and arm waving. I now hate watching the Leeds or other pianoforte competitions as each successive pianist is more flamboyant than the last. I managed in the late sixties to get down to London to hear Arrau play the last three piano sonatas by Beethoven. I have not to this day heard piano tone like it with a total economy at the keyboard producing such a regal tone that I was enchanted. When he got to the last sonata in C Minor he got to the bit where it is nothing but trills and I have to say that being a big gruff Scotsman I surprised myself to find floods of tears flowing down my cheeks and of people around me also. I never will forget that concert and that tone and it was in my head for weeks after . I find that most of Arrau’s records are just a poor imitation of the great man, and after all this is the man that Rachmaninov and Horowitz used to go backstage and congratulate him on his interpretations and tone. Horowitz also whispered to him once that he Horowitz was glad he didn’t play any Beethoven.

I wish that I had gotten to hear Arrau live.