Liszt: The Complete Songs Volume 1 – review

Polenzani/Drake(Hyperion)This stupendous disc, issued ahead of the Liszt bicentenary next year, marks the start of Hyperion's survey of his complete songs, still a grey area for many despite past attempts by major artists such as Brigitte Fassbaender and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau to rehabilitate them. Editorially, we are in difficult territory. Liszt rewrote many of them, drastically simplifying them in the process. But in musico-dramatic terms, the originals are often vastly preferable to the re...

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