2 CD
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€ 25.95
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Label Signum Classics |
UPC 0635212038826 |
Catalogue number SIGCD 388 |
Release date 10 October 2014 |
Een nieuw perspectief op de klankwereld van Wagner
Pianist Llŷr Williams verkent op Wagner Without Words de rijke en beeldende klankwereld van Richard Wagner vanuit een nieuw perspectief door middel van pianotranscripties van zijn beroemde melodieën. Het programma bevat inzichtelijke bewerkingen van Wagners opera’s door Franz Liszt en Glenn Gould, Williams eigen bewerking van de muziek uit Parsifal, en in het midden een selectie van Wagners eigen pianowerken. Wagner componeerde veel van deze werken aan het begin van zijn carrière. Ze blikken vooruit op de grootse operateske meesterwerken die nog geschreven moesten worden.
Enkele recensenten schreven over het album:
“it’s technically superb; WiIliams is equal to the toughest challenges that Liszt presents, but always puts Wagner first …the colours WiIliams creates from the keyboard in Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and the Parsifal suite are radiant and entrancing.” – The Guardian
“A varied and rewarding programme enriched by Williams’s velvet touch, meticulous voicing, attention to detail and judiciously graded dynamics. - Gramophone
“To my ears, Llŷr Williams is one of the great pianists of our age.”
John Gilhooly, CBE.
Welsh pianist Llŷr Williams is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence, and for the expressive
and communicative nature of his interpretations. He has performed with all the major UK orchestras
under conductors including Michael Tilson Thomas, Jiří Bělohlávek, Carlo Rizzi, Vasily Petrenko, Jaime
Martín, Osmo Vanska , Joseph Swensen, Grant Llewellyn and Jac Van Steen, and he has a particularly
longstanding relationship with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with whom he has in recent
seasons performed concertos ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Bartók and Mathias.
As a recitalist, Llŷr Williams regularly performs at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Perth
Concert Hall, the St David’s and Dora Stoutzker Halls in Cardiff, and the Edinburgh and East Neuk
Festivals in the UK, Salle Bourgie in Montreal and the Capital Region Classical series in Schenectady,
USA. He has a long association with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where he has,
among others, given multi-recital cycles of the music of Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. As a chamber musician he has performed with artists including Bryn Terfel, Natalie Clein, Tim Hugh, Katarina
Nazarova, Jamie Barton and Andrei Kymach. His particular interest in song repertoire is reflected in his
20-year association as one of the two official pianists of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
Llŷr Williams’ long and successful collaboration with Signum Records includes the 8-disc box-set ‘A
Schubert Journey’ (2020), the 12-volume ‘Beethoven Unbound’ (2018), a ‘Wagner Without Words’
double album (2014) and highlights from Liszt’s ‘Années de pèlerinage‘ (2012).
A former BBC New Generation Artist and Borletti-Buitoni Trust award recipient, Llŷr Williams was
born in Pentrebychan, North Wales, and read music at The Queen’s College, Oxford before taking up
a postgraduate scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal
Welsh College of Music and Drama, and in 2017 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the
University of Wales. He is also currently Artist-in-Association at the Royal Welsh College of Music and
Drama, a patron of the Gower Festival, and Associate Artist at the Cowbridge Festival.
Richard Wagner was an important innovator of music in his time. He is best known for his operas, which he himself preferred to refer to as musical dramas. He wrote the texts (the libretti) himself and sought to make a Gesamtkunstwerk, the ideal union of text, music and theatre. Over time, this lead to grandiose musical dramas which were performed in a specially built theater for these works in the small town of Bayreuth.
Wagner's greatest critic, the philosopher Nietzsche, named his former friend the "greatest miniaturist of music who in the smallest of space squeezed an endless amount of sense and sweetness". Nietzsche regarded this as a sympton of decadence, yet it does portray the large variety of treasures which can be found in Wagner's music: the mysterious fantasy stories of the love potion of Tristan & Isolde, Wotan's spear, the sea of flames of Brünhilde, the sword of Siegfried... Still the real main character is the orchestra, which shines its light on all the true intentions and feelings of these heroes with great depth.
Both as a composer and as an individual, Wagner remains a subject of controversy and emotional discussions. By many he is hailed as a hero, and by equally many others completely dismissed. But his influence as a composer and musical innovator is undeniable!