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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…
Atkinson: Everything is organically connected to everything else.
Silverman: The entire fabric of the work is based on the three themes you hear right at the beginning: the quiet quarter-note Gs, followed by the descending scale [fig.1, track 1, 0:00]; then I was going to say the "Wagnerian" outburst right after that [fig.2, track 1, 0:43], but as far as I'm concerned a Wagner opera is an extended Liszt symphonic poem, the sonata staged and sung; then, finally, the repeated note theme [that starts with the] "snare-drum" triplet figure [fig.3, track 1, 0:55]. You turn the page over and…
Sidebar 3: Who Did What and When
Recorded at the First United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 2-5 1993.
Production: Robert Silverman & John Atkinson
Engineering: John Atkinson & Robert Harley
Editing/Mixing: John Atkinson
Executive Producer: Larry Archibald
Assistant Producers: Maura Rieland & Gretchen Grogan
Piano: Steinway D supplied by Riedling Music Company, Albuquerque, NM.
Piano Technician: Charles Rempel
Booklet notes: Igor Kipnis, John Atkinson
Booklet Design: Suey Surprise
Cover painting: On a Theme by…
Well, it was inevitable. Prior to the MCD, every CD player had been a product of a major Japanese or European manufacturer, and we all know what kind of audio electronics "major" manufacturers usually design: adequate, but rarely much better. The MCD is the first player from a small, perfectionist-oriented firm, and an English one at that (Boothroyd-Stuart).
While Meridian's rather high-priced amplifiers and preamps have not garnered the best of reviews on their home turf (the English seem to prefer American electronics at the really high end), there is no question that their products…