Reviews
Liszt: Unrivalled, Volume 2
Michael Kaykov (piano)
rec. 2023, Skillman Music, New York, USA
Odradek ODRCD455 [59]
https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/09/liszt-unrivalled-vol-2-odradek-records
Michael Kaykov’s first volume of Liszt: Unrivalled had as its centrepiece a swift and cogent performance of the Piano Sonata in B minor (review). It was accompanied by less familiar piano solo pieces, and most of this volume is devoted to such repertoire. Even a Hungarian Rhapsody is No.19, not the famous No.2, and a Mephisto Waltz is No.3 rather than No.1. The Waltz anticipates the asperities of the harmonic world of later composers like Scriabin. Kaykov’s note draws attention to these two works: “It’s fascinating to compare [them] with their predecessors written decades earlier. Liszt kept up the habit of tirelessly perfecting his works and many of these late compositions exist in multiple versions, not all published.”
The Hungarian Rhapsody No.19 from 1885 is an example of Liszt’s very late style. It draws upon musical material by his pupil Kornel Ábrányi, Cárdás nobles, which in turn had deployed existing music. As usual, Liszt transformed it all into an original piece. Kaykov plays with an affecting expressive freedom in the opening, and with verve in the demanding faster music of the later part, up to the stirring coda. The introspection of the opening may account for the time of 9:34 against Leslie Howard’s 9:04 in the Hyperion edition of Liszt’s complete solo piano music.
The Mephisto Waltz No.3, may not make the formidable technical demands of No.1, but has its own fast open octaves, semiquaver arpeggios, repeated notes and interlocking chords. Kaykov plays with skill and musicality, both essential to do justice to Liszt. Continuing with “devilish” inspirations, the Mephisto Polka from 1882-1883 is a set of variations, some of the improvisatory in feeling, and apparently challenging to play with or without the more difficult options in the score. Kaykov again relishes Liszt’s diabolism and wit.
The Csárdás macabre of 1881-1882 has repeated and comfortless bare fifths. Its percussive qualities presage Bartók, and Liszt himself asked on his own copy of the score: “May one write, or listen to, such a thing?” He might have asked the same of the futuristically entitled Bagatelle sans tonalité (initially named Mephisto Waltz No.4), where tonality is stretched to its limits if not yet abandoned. Kaykov makes a strong case for all these pieces as they represent a Liszt pointing a way to the harmonic future, but are still in themselves expressive in new ways.
The programme includes two 1879 arrangements from Liszt’s opera paraphrases. The Sarabande und Chaconne aus dem Singspiel Almira is from the 19-years-old Handel’s first opera. Liszt’s piece includes his own variations on Handel’s Sarabande. Tchaikovsky’s opera is the source of Polonaise from Eugene Onegin. Both works blend Liszt’s earlier virtuoso style with his later futuristic harmonic manner, and Kaykov again performs them admirably. He is an artist with the temperament, as well as the technique, for Liszt. The disc has good sound, truthful and atmospheric, and the booklet notes are helpful, if brief. As with the first volume, the numerous photographs of Kaykov in black tie might have been made way for fuller notes on these unfamiliar works.
Let us leave the pianist with the last words, for they sum up the appeal of this disc and the nature of its claim on collectors: “I selected and learned the works […] on this album in the hope that the listener discovers new facets of the composer’s genius […] These lesser-played compositions allow for greater interpretive freedom and I thoroughly enjoyed recording them.” That enjoyment is certainly captured for the rest of us to admire.
-Roy Westbrook. MusicWeb International
Liszt: Unrivalled
Michael Kaykov (piano)
rec. 2021, Skillman Music, New York
Odradek ODRCD428 [62]
https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/08/liszt-unrivalled-volume-1-odradek
I had not heard of young American pianist Michael Kaykov, perhaps because he is mainly a published scholar with a doctoral thesis on Scriabin, and a university teacher. Much of his wide repertoire comes from the virtuoso pianist/composers, Liszt, Scriabin and Rachmaninov, but he would not fail Glenn Gould’s test of young pianists focussed on the spectacle of difficult repertory. Gould said: “a Bach two-part invention would soon find them out”. Kaykov plays plenty of Bach, and much else.
This Liszt recital has the great B minor Sonata as its centrepiece. A good range of other genres, including transcriptions and some late pieces, surround it. The disc’s title seems justified insofar as the Sonata is considered unrivalled as Liszt’s greatest work for the instrument, perhaps his greatest of all. In one continuous movement, with only a few motifs developed and transformed, with sections that serve as a slow movement and as a scherzo, the Sonata is densely unified yet offers the variety expected in a multi-movement work. Apart from mastering the technical difficulties, the pianist has to make the work appear coherent over its typical half-hour run. The earlier generations did regard it as almost incoherent.
Pianist Kenneth Hamilton, who wrote the book on the Liszt Sonata (literally – the Cambridge Music Handbook, 1996), gave the BBC Radio 3 “Building a Library” a comparison of numerous recordings. He said that 30 minutes was about the upper limit of acceptability for a satisfying rendition of the work. His account, taking 27:15, was widely praised (review). Shorter playing time is not achieved just by faster playing of the fast music in works of this size, but also by less indulgence in the pauses, rubato and in tempi for the slow passages. The swiftest that I know is Leslie Howard’s reading, merely 24:03 (in his monumental complete recording of all Liszt’s solo piano music on Hyperion), fast but still compellingly eloquent.
Kaykov, with 26:36, gives a fine account of the piece, brisk in the opening swift flourishes, but with good articulation and convincing transitions between the motifs. He has the technique for Liszt but never deploys it to obscure the trajectory of a passage, so the long narrative unfolds convincingly. The slow section is poetically played, but kept flowing. The fugato passage – the work’s short scherzo – is fleet-fingered and clean, so that the delights of the contrapuntal detail come through, and those final formidable octaves are stirring. The quiet envoi sets the seal on a very good performance. It may not displace your current favourite versions of the work recorded by so many great pianists, but it is a fitting centrepiece to this programme.
The recital is bookended by transcriptions, an aspect of Liszt’s art maybe too easily overlooked. Beethoven’s Op 48 sets six songs to poems by Christian Gellert. Liszt resequenced them into Sechs geistliche Lieder von Gellert [six spiritual songs by Gellert]. Kaykov plays the first and third. Gottes Macht und Vorsehung [God’s might and providence] lasts just over a minute, but Kaykov invests it with some nobility. (One wonders why Liszt did not extend the arrangement somewhat: Beethoven’s Lied gives the singer another fifteen verses to choose repeats from.) Busslied [song of penitence] is more substantial at over four minutes. It also has a more independent piano part, especially in the later stages, and Beethoven has given it an aria-like elaboration. It is the only song he gives Italian rather than German markings. Kaykov plays Liszt’s embellishments with no little relish.
Valse de concert sur deux motifs de Lucia et Parisina de Donizetti is a much more typical Liszt transcription, drawing on the stage rather than the cloister. Liszt combined contrapuntally two waltzes from Donizetti’s operas. Kaykov’s fine playing has the drama and atmosphere of the opera house.
The Scherzo and March S.177 have the reputation as notoriously taxing to play, with fast speeds and repeated notes among other virtuoso devices. That seems to hold no terrors for Kaykov, who surmounts the challenges with high skill, even aplomb. The work should be better known, even if takes much time to master, and perhaps this recording will advance its cause. It deserves to.
Three short pieces from Liszt’s late period round off the programme. Nuages gris [grey clouds] and Unstern! [unfortunate] are both from 1881. Kaykov evokes their unmistakeable modernity with authority, and confirms claims made for Liszt’s position at the forefront of radical developments in musical language. La lugubre gondola is from 1882-1883 in the second version played here. Spending time with Wagner in Venice in 1882, Liszt was fascinated by the black-draped funeral gondolas. He saw this piece as a premonition of Wagner’s death in Venice the next year. Its harmonic ambiguity has an appropriate bleakness, which the pianist unsparingly evokes.
The recording is in good atmospheric stereo. The piano has a sound range from the delicate and evocative to the thunderous, at the climax of Unstern! for example. The booklet notes (in English, French and German) are clear and helpful but brief when discussing less familiar pieces. Some of the eight very similar photographs of Michael Kaykov in concert dress might make way for more text. But this is a valuable recital. It covers several types from the Liszt’s vast solo output, and it does justice to each of the different styles.
-Roy Westbrook. MusicWeb International
LISZT Csárdás macabre, S 224. Impromptu, S 191. Hungarian Rhapsody No. 19 in d, S 244. Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch, S 206. Mephisto Polka, S 217. In festo transfigurationis Domini nostri Jesu Christi, S 188. Toccata, S 197a. Mephisto Waltz No. 3, S 216. Sarabande und Chaconne aus dem Singspiel “Almira,” S 181. Polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” S 429. Bagatelle sans tonalité, S 216a
• Michael Kaykov (pn) • ODRADEK 455 (59:11)
Some companies produce piano recordings of the highest tier; some just do not. Recording a piano is one of the hardest tasks: It entails reproducing each piano’s individual sound, and then conveying the pianist’s subtleties of touch. Hyperion and Decca have fine and deserved reputations in this area; and so should Odradek, a label lucky enough to be based in Pescara, Italy (also home to Fabbrini’s Steinway showroom). Although this disc was recorded in New York (on a non-Fabbrini Steinway B), it shares an excellence of sonic reproduction with the very greatest piano recordings of our time.
That recording supports the interpretative efforts of Michael Kaykov, a pianist only featured once before in Fanfare: a disc of the Liszt B-Minor Sonata, plus a feast of fillers, very positively reviewed by Huntley Dent in 45:6. Although not labeled as such in the review, that was Liszt Unrivalled, Volume One. Meet Volume Two.
And what a fine release this is. The repertoire is a dream for those who like to explore Lisztian byways, here with a concentration on Liszt’s miraculous late period. The very first piece heard here, Czárdás macabre (1882), epitomizes many late Liszt traits: an obsessive bent here, in the many repetitions, combined with harmonically adventurous sequences. Among all that remains a streak of virtuosity, so the interpretive challenge is to convey both: Kaykov does so with aplomb. Another characteristic revealed in this very first performance is Kaykov’s rhythmic surefootedness: His rock-steady way with rhythm adds to the growing tension. Although this is late Liszt, there are several classic recordings extant, including those by John Ogdon (slower, more threatening than Kaykov; both pianists reveal superb articulation), Louis Kentner (perhaps less Gothic horror than most but nevertheless gripping, a muffled 1951 recording notwithstanding), and early Alfred Brendel (1958 in Vienna, a perfect mix of youthful enthusiasm and an intellect that realizes the import of this piece). All stand out, and now Kaykov joins their ranks.
The Impromptu, S 191 (1872) is indeed like an improvisation, but there are harmonic shifts that place this as late in the Liszt catalog. Moments seem to link to Liszt’s own “Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este” from the third and final book of Années de pélerinages, S 163 in Kaykov’s account. It almost topples my preference in this piece, Leslie Howard on Hyperion, a 1988 recording made in St Peter’s Church, Petersham, and indeed sonically it does. But Howard’s variety of tone is just that bit broader, his opening left hand just that bit more even.
The last of the Hungarian Rhapsodies stands apart from the other 18, being composed over 30 years after the main body. It likewise stands apart stylistically: There is exuberance, for sure, but this is tempered by compositional tropes from the later years. Another tightrope for the pianist, Kaykov has the surefire technique for every demand, but also understands the piece on both gestural and overall structural terms. This is the complete interpretation, one might think, and indeed it comes across as such, if it were not that just occasionally some of the gestures speak of the studio (in the upward right-hand arpeggiations).
The opening of the Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch is pure late Liszt, with deep bass repetitions posed against scrunchy midrange dissonance. Written a year before the composer’s death, it speaks directly of the Void. Here, repetitions rise with a palpable sense of desperation, and Kaykov is rightly relentless. He is certainly more convincing in this piece than Jenő Jandó on Naxos. It’s worth pointing out here a vital disc that shares this piece as part of its program with Kaykov: Andrea Bonatta’s disc of late Liszt piano music on Astrée, performed on the “piano Liszt,” an 1873 Bayreuth Steingraeber. Bonatta is another superb pianist worth investigating; his grasp of the piece is equal to that of Kaykov’s.
The Mephisto Polka is a fascinating little gem, spiky and quirky in its demeanor. Kaykov reveals fine attention to detail: The acciaccaturas are nicely, carefully performed, whereas with Sviatoslav Richter (Cologne in 1988) they are more impish. A fascinating supplement to one’s listening in this piece is Eduard Erdmann’s 1948 Frankfurt recording for Hessichen Rundfunk, almost a deconstruction of the score, in the course of which the piece becomes even more representative of Liszt’s new style.
The short In festo transfigurationis Domini nostri Jesu Christi is representative of the meditative side of Liszt that can transport the listener to other realms. Kaykov offers a fine modern reading; the great Vladimir Sofronitsky was caught live in 1956 (released as part of Russian Classic’s “Russian Piano School” series) and is just that bit more at Liszt’s spiritual heart. That said, Kaykov’s bass melody definition is beyond comparison here. This is a terrific, and little-known, piece. The Toccata, S 197a, is marked prestissimo and is therefore an exception in the output of Liszt in his later years. But harmonically it is not so different. It takes a lot to beat Gianluca Cascioli’s prestidigitation in this piece (DG), and his version is really the finest; he simultaneously pinpoints the dark heart of this (ironically, in that light) predominantly white-note piece.
The third Mephisto Waltz offers a wake-up call to listeners that there is life beyond the first. Kaykov concentrates on the fantastical, to the detriment of the fanfare-like opening. Just compare him with Leslie Howard’s 1985 Hyperion version, which basically opens with a carillon of trumpets. Cyprien Katsaris has a similar idea, perhaps just a touch less marked than Howard in delivery and stymied by a dry recording. Kaykov’s inspired, narrational way with this piece works supremely well, though, and should certainly be seen as at least an adjunct to Howard; towards the end, Kaykov is like a force of nature.
Liszt’s homage to Handel, the Sarabande und Chaconne aus dem Singspiel “Almira”, was another piece new to me. The catalogs hardly overflow with recordings, either; Alessio Bax included it in his Signum disc Baroque Reflections. The courtly grandeur of a sarabande meets the Lisztian depths of despair in S 181 (despite its low Searle number, this dates from 1879). Handel’s early opera clearly piqued Liszt’s curiosity. This is a double set of variations on two dances heard early on in Almira (Liszt reverses their order for his take). The distance between Handel and Liszt is such that Searle classed this as an original work, not an arrangement. This piece also crops up in Alessio Bax’s disc referenced above, and it is hard to find a preference here. Both are fine pianists, and Bax’s way with chords is that of 100 percent simultaneity of attack. Both are gifted with superb recorded sound. Given the differences between their programs, perhaps one should own both. Kaykov’s way with descending gestures, like sighs, is most effective in the “Sarabande” part, while the fearsome difficulties are as nothing to him.
There is brightness in this program, primarily in the form of the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin. If Kaykov could be brighter still (in energy rather than sound), there is no missing his delicacy and transparency. One of the primary assets of this performance is Kaykov’s way with the sustaining pedal: nuanced, varied, and always perfectly judged for the situation, from choral thickets to filigree webs. Many will know this piece via Thibaudet’s excellent Decca account (there’s no doubting the opening brightness there) or Cziffra’s individual way (those chords of the opening measurers so very clipped) or the great Michele Campanella (surprisingly low-voltage when compared to the present company), but Kaykov holds his head very high indeed.
Given the gravitas of much of the music here, it is quite right that Kaykov ends not with a transcription but with a piece enshrouded with mystery, one that points the way forward and has surely fueled not a few music analysis classes: the Bagatelle sans tonalité. Kaykov’s way is inspired. This is another narration, a story of veiled and mysterious happenings. Stephen Hough (Hyperion) is another pianist who shares those storytelling abilities and offers a bejeweled account when it comes to fingerwork; Leslie Howard is scarcely less compelling, while Alfred Brendel’s 1958 account shows the best of that pianist’s early virtuosity alongside his intellectual prowess (he has the finest “laughing,” almost diabolical, staccato of them all).
This is a truly fine disc. Michael Kaykov has an academic background—a DMA on Scriabin—and a born performer’s spirit, not to mention a true virtuoso technique. There is much here to challenge the listener, and much to inspire. Recommended.
- Colin Clarke
This article originally appeared in Issue 48:1 (Sept/Oct 2024) of Fanfare Magazine
The title here is Liszt: Unrivalled, Volume 2 (the unusual placement of the colon is from the disc). The pieces are late Liszt, written in 1872–85, and point to the future of harmony and form we find in the early 1900s. It is a superb follow-up to Volume 1, very highly praised by Huntley Dent in these pages (see Fanfare 45:6, Jul/Aug 2022). It is clear from that review and Kaykov’s website videos that he is a young pianist with a fantastic future. I can only echo those sentiments in regards to this current release.
With degrees from three of New York’s top music schools (Mannes, Juilliard, and the Manhattan School of Music), Kaykov has been taught by some of the best, including Jerome Rose and Jerome Lowenthal. He continues in NY as a faculty member of the Harlem School of the Arts. This recital begins with what I first thought would be an odd choice, until I heard the interpretation. I had thought of the Csárdás macabre as a rather repetitive example of Liszt’s late harmonic vocabulary. Kaykov plays it faster and with more dynamic contrasts than others. The musical logic behind this interpretation seems perfect and sets the tone for the rest of the program. I was immediately impressed with both his urgency and sensitive touch.
The entire program is an eye-opener for those not familiar with Liszt beyond his most famous pieces. We get the Mephisto Waltz No. 3 with its rising and falling fourths and the Mephisto Polka, a study in grace notes and chromaticism; both are quite different than the well-known first Mephisto Waltz. The last of his 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies was written a good 30 years after the first 15 and is much more attuned to Liszt’s late harmonic style. The two virtuoso transcriptions included here include the Polonaise from Evgeny Onegin, done only months after the opera’s premiere. He only transcribed one Baroque piece in his later years, and the Sarabande und Chaconne from Handel’s Almira is striking in its anticipation of Busoni’s Bach transcriptions. Kaykov has flawless technique, but more importantly a sense of musicality that makes his interpretations fascinating.
One can select a Liszt program that highlights a single form or style of compositions. Many discs in Leslie Howard’s epic 99-CD transversal of all of Liszt’s piano music are arranged along these lines. Over the years those CDs were recorded, I eagerly anticipated every new release. Now I have two Liszt recitals from Kaykov that are each much more varied in their contents. He leans towards lesser-known pieces without depriving the listener of some dashes of the virtuoso Liszt. He is still young and very likely doesn’t want to get pigeonholed into 15 years of Liszt like Howard did (despite some other great Howard recordings). Nevertheless, I would jump on any new Liszt that I found from Kaykov. Odradek’s recorded piano sound (by Scott Chiu) is state-of-the-art and the booklet essay by Antonio Schneekloth is excellent. Altogether, this is a highly recommended release.
- James Harrington
This article originally appeared in Issue 48:1 (Sept/Oct 2024) of Fanfare Magazine.
LISZT Piano Sonata in b. La lugubre gondola (2nd version). Nuages gris. Scherzo and March, S 177. Unstern!, S 208. Caprices-Valses: Waltz on Two Themes by Donizetti. BEETHOVEN-LISZT Six Songs on Poems of Gellert (excerpts)
• Michael Kaykov (pn) • ODRADEK 428 (61:10)
When an ambitious young pianist throws down the gauntlet by programming Liszt’s B-Minor Sonata, too often, I’m afraid, the gauntlet is thrown back. It’s all the more rewarding, then, to find that American pianist Michael Kaykov succeeds brilliantly. This is my first encounter with Kaykov, who earned his doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music in 2020, but this entire CD, titled Liszt: Unrivalled, displays remarkable flair and presages a sterling concert career. He plays the sonata, and indeed everything on the program, with virtuoso confidence, sure musical instincts, and an obvious love of music-making.
Liszt’s innovation in the B-Minor Sonata was to structure a long rhapsodic work that merges theme-and-variations with sonata form and more than a hint of an orchestral tone poem. In the right hands the listener’s attention is held in rapt attention for nearly half an hour—I experienced this, along with a completely silent audience, in a performance by Maurizio Pollini at Carnegie Hall. In the wrong hands there is clatter, bombast, and clumsy transitions to cause Liszt’s spell to unravel. No such problems arise in Kaykov’s performance. Liszt’s masterpiece has a peculiarity (shared by the “Moonlight” and “Appassionata” Sonatas) that a performance can be judged from the opening few measures.
Kaykov’s assurance in the first statement of the opening theme, even those first two clipped notes, makes the listener relax—things are going to go well here. So they do, essentially because the pianist combines intelligence and instinct to hold together the music’s sprawling panorama. He plays with such panache that I hesitate to point to any deficits in his performance, only pointing out that there’s a tendency at times to prefer too much force. Happily, the piano sound on this recording is nearly ideal for range, vividness, and lifelike impact, so no banging occurs—but a few repeated fortissimo chords come closest.
One isn’t surprised to read in Kaykov’s bio that he first played in public at the age of six and went on to be educated at Mannes and Juilliard up to the master’s degree level before proceeding to his doctorate (his Ph.D. thesis was on Scriabin’s études). Currently he holds several teaching positions in New York City, including at the private Oclef School and the Harlem School for the Arts.
To be this attuned to Liszt has to come naturally to be convincing. Kaykov’s bent for musicology has led to an unusually interesting program here. In Liszt’s vast output, not many general listeners can be familiar with his arrangement of six Lieder by Beethoven set to verse taken from Christian Fürchtegott Gellert’s influential book, Sacred Odes and Songs (Geistliche Oden und Lieder). Nuages gris and La lugubre gondola are much less rare than they used to be, but I’ve heard the giddy Scherzo and March only once before. The recording came from the impressive young Italian virtuoso Leonardo Pierdomenico in 2019 (Piano Classics), but Kaykov’s reading is more unbuttoned, and he is much better at capturing the grotesque undertones of the Scherzo, which has kinship to the Mephisto Waltz No. 1 and most especially Gnomenreigen.
It adds to the entertainment value of this release that Kaykov can switch modes from the serious import of La lugubre gondola to the manic rum-tum of Scherzo and March. I realize that the veiled scorn in which much of Liszt’s bravura music was once held has changed into an almost uniform air of respectability, but Liszt wouldn’t be Liszt if he didn’t take us to the circus, as he does here. Some of the Caprices-Valses are elegant entrées into Parisian salons, and the one played here, based on two opera motifs from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Parisima, has its share of cultivated manners, but in the main it is a showpiece that encapsulates every pianistic gesture Liszt specialized in. Kaykov clearly takes great joy from performing the piece, which ends the program on a dazzling note.
Calling-card discs come my way quite regularly, but rarely with the musical impact of this one. Kaykov is a gifted pianist and someone to watch closely. I eagerly anticipate any future release by him. Strongly recommended.
- Huntley Dent