{"id":11015,"date":"2013-03-30T11:27:38","date_gmt":"2013-03-30T16:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=11015"},"modified":"2013-03-30T11:27:38","modified_gmt":"2013-03-30T16:27:38","slug":"keyboard-thursday-album-review-valentina-lisitsas-perfectly-coiffed-beethoven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/03\/30\/keyboard-thursday-album-review-valentina-lisitsas-perfectly-coiffed-beethoven\/","title":{"rendered":"Keyboard Thursday album review: Valentina Lisitsa’s perfectly coiffed Beethoven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"valentina\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pianist Valentina Lisitsa had a career before she gathered 50-million-plus YouTube views. Now that she’s a star, Naxos has released a recording she made in 2008 featuring a Golden Age piano programme featuring a Beethoven sonata, some Schumann as well as the work of rivals Sigismond Thalberg and Franz Liszt.<\/p>\n

\"lisitsacd\"<\/a>Lisitsa is such a phenomenon because she is a musical personality. She has technique to burn and a steely determination about how each piece is supposed to sound. So much so that she manages to rob all of the music on this album of spontaneiety.<\/p>\n

Making a Beethoven sonata sound spontaneous is about as contrived as making a large 54-year-old operatic soprano into a believable, poor Mimi, dying of tuberculosis. But it can be done.<\/p>\n

Where my favourite pianists would make the “Appassionata” Sonata<\/em> sound a bit dishevelled, dressed in clean but worn, slightly mismatched fabrics, Lisitsa has placed one of the most popular of Beethoven’s piano works in a tight corset bedecked in silk and wool. The head is crowned with a perfectly coiffed mane, without a single hair out of place.<\/p>\n

This is formidable playing, but not for everyone.<\/p>\n

Robert Schumann’s 13 Kinderszenen<\/em> are carefully scrubbed and not allowed to play outside the fenced area behind the house.<\/p>\n

You get the picture. And I happily concede that there are many people who will find this sort of playing hugely satisfying.<\/p>\n

The album ends with two showpieces. The first is a not-often-heard fantasy on musical themes from Rossini’s Barber of Seville<\/em> by Sigismond Thalberg who, in the day, was as much a pianistic rock star as Franz Liszt. The short, 9-minute piece is a great vehicle to show off a virtuoso pianist’s stuff — but not like the ferocious Totentanz by Liszt that is like a week’s worth of hot yoga rolled into 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

It is big, impressive and, in a feat that likely neither Liszt not Thalberg would have managed, dispatched by Lisitsa-the-powerhouse\u00a0 without a single wrong note.<\/p>\n

You can find all the details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John Terauds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pianist Valentina Lisitsa had a career before she gathered 50-million-plus YouTube views. Now that she’s a star, Naxos has released a recording she made in 2008 featuring a Golden Age piano programme featuring a Beethoven sonata, some Schumann as well as the work of rivals Sigismond Thalberg and Franz Liszt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,77,47,51,52],"tags":[6451,206,485,1981,2352,6468,6471,2945,3266,3442],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/lisitsacd.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-2RF","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11015"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}