Reader Gregory Comnes of Tampa, Florida took exception to my January 1996 review of the $1650 Meridian 518 Digital Audio Processor (Vol.19 No.1, p.249): "Shame on you for missing the point..." he thundered. "You allude to Meridian's claim that, when used as a digital preamp, the 518 can sound 'frighteningly good,' but you didn't have time to use it as a preamp! How long could it have taken to hear what for most of is the most compelling reason for CD-only users to own this piece: the elimination of a compromising…
search
John Atkinson wrote again on the Meridian 518 in July 1996 (Vol.19 No.7):
"Rarely, if ever, can this densely written sonata have been presented so lucidly with each note precisely in place...the dramatic and lyrical aspects were never slighted or taken for granted."
—Peter G. Davis, writing in the New York Times about Robert Silverman's New York debut in 1978, when he performed the Liszt B-Minor Piano Sonata in Alice Tully Hall.
—Peter G. Davis, writing in the New York Times about Robert Silverman's New York debut in 1978, when he performed the Liszt B-Minor Piano Sonata in Alice Tully Hall.
If you listen in order to the sounds of the three previous piano recordings I have produced—Anna Maria Stanczyk performing Chopin on the first Stereophile Test CD, Robert Silverman performing Brahms on Intermezzo, and performing…
And even when things are optimized for two omni mikes, the imaging is never better than vague. We had not had a choice with Concert, as explained in the article that appeared in the liner notes. However, the sense of "bloom" on this recording was the best yet. I therefore wanted to stick with the spaced B&K omnis for Sonata, yet I wanted to reinforce them with a centrally placed microphone array. I hoped then to be able to have my cake and eat it too: combine the true tone colors, extended low frequencies, and sense of ambient spaciousness captured by the pair of omnis with the more…
For on-site monitoring, Robert Harley and I used headphones exclusively. These were mainly Stax SR-Lambda Pros fed by a Meridian 263 D/A processor, supplemented by a pair of Sennheiser HD580s fed by either a Melos SHA-1 or a HeadRoom Supreme. For the editing, I used B&W Silver Signature loudspeakers driven by a Mark Levinson No.333 power amplifier. A Levinson No.30.5 digital processor decoded the digital output of a Sonic Solutions hard-disk editing system running on a Macintosh Quadra 650 computer. A Sonic Frontiers UltraJitterbug was used to minimize data-word timing variations.
…
Robert Silverman: Liszt couldn't have written the pieces that he had written on a piano [from] 30 years earlier. He knew he needed a "modern" piano to perform any of these works.
John Atkinson: You had mentioned at the sessions that while it was the same Steinway you'd played on Concert, a year had gone by and it actually felt more responsive under your fingers. To the lay person, all instruments look the same. Are they really individuals? How different are pianos?
Silverman: How different are amplifiers? [laughs] I'd say pianos are more different. By a lot, actually.
But…
Igor Kipnis on the music
Sonata in B-Minor (Searle.178): Franz Liszt is credited with having written only one full-fledged sonata for piano, if one doesn't include the Fantasia quasi sonata, Après une lecture du Dante (from his Années de Pèlerinage, Book II: Italy), which is more dependent on its literary base. At least that's all that has come down to us from the composer's time. A C-Minor sonata had been mentioned by Liszt, and there evidently also was a sonata for four hands at one keyboard. Additionally, the composer as late as 1881 was able to recall the first 16 bars of a two-hand…
All four movements of the Sonata demonstrate one of Liszt's most famous compositional devices: motivic variation, with themes being varied and contrasted in tempo and harmony according to mood and character. Liszt's thematic transformation technique even applies to rhythmic variation of those themes. Although the individual movements of his sonata—Exposition, Development, Recapitulation, and Coda—clearly define classical sonata form, that architectural plan, which serves individual movements, also applies to the entire body of the approximately half-hour sonata, the work being bound together…
Profound melancholy continues with Liszt's quote from Letter 53: "What do I want? what am I? what to ask of Nature?...For cause cannot be seen, and conclusions but mislead; all forms change and are reshaped, and the illusion of permanence soon exhausts itself...I feel, I exist only to be diminished by indomitable desires, to imbibe the allure of a fanciful World, and to be awestruck at her seductive imperfections (footnote 3)."
The Vallée d'Obermann is a prime example of one of Liszt's favorite compositional techniques, that of thematic metamorphosis; this entire piece is based on a…
Sidebar 1: The Music
Sonata: Piano Works by Franz Liszt (DDD) STPH008-2 Robert Silverman, piano
Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in b (S.178) 33:11
[1] Lento assai—Allegro Energico 13:08
[2] Andante Sostenuto 8:23
[3] Allegro Energico 11:40
[4] La lugubre gondola I (S.200) 4:21
[5] La lugubre gondola II (S.200) 9:05
Années de Pelèrinage, First Year: Switzerland
[6] Vallée d'Obermann (S.160/6) 15:37
[7] Orage (S.160/5) 5:01
[8] Liebestraum (S.541) 5:21
Total Playing Time: 72:37
Sidebar 2: Robert Silverman
Robert Silverman is perhaps best-known in his native Canada, where he has performed with major orchestras from coast to coast. But he has also appeared, to outstanding reviews, with the Chicago Symphony and the Boston Pops, and in New York, Washington, London, Paris, Budapest, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, and the former Soviet Union.
His repertoire ranges from Bach to Mozart to Gershwin to new age to contemporary—including the first performance in Canada of George Crumb's Makrokosmos.
He has made over a dozen recordings: for Stereophile, CBC…