Lise de la Salle

Lise de la Salle plays Liszt

Lise de la Salle’s sixth recording comes a year after the release of her highly-praised CD of Chopin. It is dedicated to Franz Liszt, who was born 200 years ago. The CD includes original works such as his Ballade No. 2 and Funérailles, as well as some of Liszt’s numerous arrangements of music by other composers including Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Wagner.

De la Salle’s new recording presents a selection of Franz Liszt’s compositions for solo piano that is quite diverse. Large-scale works like the Ballade No 2 in B Minor, and Après une lecture du Dante, and shorter pieces such as Nuages gris.

Lise de la Salle was born in 1988 and began studying the piano at the age of four. She gave her first concert at nine, and made her concerto debut in a live broadcast on Radio France at the age of 13. Since 2001 she has pursued an international career that has taken her to such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Hollywood Bowl, Wigmore Hall in London, the Met Museum in New York, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Tracks on this CD are:

Here is what the New York Times wrote:

“Ms. de la Salle has a powerful technique; she stormed through Liszt’s crashing torrents of chords and whirlwind runs with panache. But she also demonstrated a poetic musicality in the more introspective interludes, which she enhanced with colorful shading and phrasing. Her muscular approach illuminated the nobility and monumental sweep of “Funérailles.” Written to commemorate the execution of 14 Hungarian revolutionaries, the work veers from funeral march to danse macabre to gentle melancholy…”

…………… New York Times, 2/21/2011

Here is Lise de la Salle, performing Liszt’s St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots

And here is Lise de la Salle in Rehearsals for a concert in Koln, Germany:

And finally: Mozart!

Tags: Lise de la Salle, pianist, Liszt