Liszt: Unrivalled Volume 2
Released on April 26, 2024:
American pianist and academic Michael Kaykov follows his first Odradek release, Liszt: Unrivalled, with Unrivalled Volume 2, an album devoted to the composer's extraordinary late piano works.
Underestimated at the time, Liszt's late piano works are increasingly recognised as masterpieces of innovation, pushing the boundaries of tonality and style with a radical daring that paved the way for modernism. Each work on this album is an illustration of these remarkable developments. Highlights include the Csardas macabre which features empty sequences of fifths, almost minimalist rhythmic repetitions and chromatic undulations of pared-back melodic lines. The Impromptu, S. 191 lives up to the spontaneity of its name, while the last four of the 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies were composed some 30 years after the first 15 and have a completely different character, epitomising Liszt's ascetic late style.
The Funeral Prelude and Funeral March are pervaded with chromaticism, dissonant harmonies, augmented intervals and tonal ambiguity, while brevity and simplicity characterise the Mephisto Polka. The Bagatelle sans tonalite, with its extreme chromaticism and dissolution of functional harmony, heralds a new musical epoch beyond the Romantic era with which Liszt is most often associated. Michael Kaykov approaches this magnificent repertoire with sensitivity, nuance and breath-taking skill.
Photos by Jiyang Chen.
Michael Kaykov plays Chopin
Released on February 23, 2023.
Recorded in December 2022, at Skillman Music Recording Studio, NY.
Audio engineers: Rick Liu and Wei-Xiong Wang.
Liszt: Unrivalled
Released on April 15, 2022:
American pianist and scholar Michael Kaykov plays an array of Liszt's most powerful piano pieces, including the Sonata in B minor, as well as two of Beethoven's 'Sechs geistliche Lieder von Gellert' in transcriptions by Liszt, on whom Beethoven once bestowed a 'kiss of consecration'.
Of these Beethoven songs we hear Liszt's arrangements of the noble, imposing 'Gottes Macht und Vorsehung' ('God's Might and Providence'), and the sombre 'Busslied' or 'Song of Penitence' a perfect fusion of Beethoven's original material with Liszt's enriched pianism.”
When Liszt joined Wagner and his wife Cosima Liszt's daughter in Venice in 1882, he became fixated on the passing funeral gondolas and went on to write two versions of the dark-hued 'La lugubre gondola'. Michael Kaykov plays the second version, which is even more uncompromising than the first, its tonally ambiguous soundworld typical of Liszt's late output.
Written a year earlier, Liszt's impressionistic 'Nuages gris' has achieved almost legendary status as a work that paves the way towards modernity, with its twinging dissonances, loose approach to tonality and haunting ending. Also dating from 1881, 'Unstern!' ('Unlucky!') shows just how forward-looking Liszt's music became, with bare tritones, whole tones, jarring dissonances and a terrifying climax.
Liszt's staggeringly demanding 'Scherzo und Marsch' combines two movements into one larger structure a principle that would be taken to further extremes in the Sonata in B minor. This work is one of the most innovative piano sonatas of the 19th century: a continuous whole in which all four movements are amalgamated.
The recital is completed by the third of Liszt's Three 'Caprices-Valses', the 'Valse de concert sur deux motifs de Lucia et Parisina de Donizetti', which is based on themes from Donizetti's operas 'Parisina' and 'Lucia di Lammermoor', and is striking for its wealth of ideas and for Liszt's deft combination of waltz themes from the two operas.
Album linear notes by Joanna Wyld. 2022.
Photos by Jiyang Chen.
“Five stars: A Liszt recital as unexpected as it is brilliant”
“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.
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.
Some of the Caprices-Valses are elegant entrées into Parisian salons, and the one played here, based on two opera motifs from Donizetti’s Lammermoor and Parisina, has its share of cultivated manners, but in the main it is a showpiece that encapsulate 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, Fanfare Magazine
Released on May 12, 2021:
First all-Liszt album
Two Episodes from Lenau’s Faust and Other Piano Works
Recorded in April 2021, at Skillman Music Recording Studio, NY.
Audio engineers: Iver Atkins and
Wei-Xiong Wang.
Mastering: Jeremy Ajani Jordan
Unedited take from a 2021 recording session for the album.