Byrin Janis - True Romantic
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Fryderyk Chopin, Franz Liszt
Label: Angel
Magazine Review Date: 10/1999
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 56
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 556780-2
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(3) Impromptus, Movement: No. 1 in A flat, Op. 29 |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Fryderyk Chopin, Composer |
(27) Etudes, Movement: C sharp minor, Op. 25/7 |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Fryderyk Chopin, Composer |
Mazurkas (Complete), Movement: No. 2 in C sharp minor, Op. 6/2 (1830) |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Fryderyk Chopin, Composer |
Mazurkas (Complete), Movement: No. 49 in F minor, Op. 68/4 (1849) |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Fryderyk Chopin, Composer |
Années de pèlerinage année 2: Italie, Movement: Sonetto 104 del Petrarca |
Franz Liszt, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Franz Liszt, Composer |
Nocturnes, Movement: No. 12 in G, Op. 37/2 |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Fryderyk Chopin, Composer |
Waltzes |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer |
Sans mesure |
Franz Liszt, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Franz Liszt, Composer |
(6) Consolations, Movement: Andantino |
Franz Liszt, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Franz Liszt, Composer |
Tristan und Isolde (Wagner)–Liebestod |
Franz Liszt, Composer
Byron Janis, Piano Franz Liszt, Composer |
Author: Bryce Morrison
EMI’s ‘Byron Janis: True Romantic’ provides an enthralling complement to the two instalments in Philips’s Great Pianists series (Vol. 1 was reviewed in 2/99). For while it would be idle to pretend that this 70-year-old virtuoso, struck down at the height of his career with psoriatic arthritis, still commands the velocity and reflex of his earlier years, his later Chopin and Liszt are a tribute to a devotion and commitment gloriously enriched by experience. The First Impromptu is piquantly voiced and phrased while the C sharp minor Etude, Op. 25 No. 7, could hardly be more hauntingly confided, more ‘blue’ or inturned. How you miss the repeat in the C sharp minor Mazurka, Op. 50 No. 3 (not Op. 15, as the jewel-case claims), given such cloudy introspection and if there are moments when you recall how Rubinstein – forever Chopin’s most aristocratic spokesman – can convey a world of feeling in a scarcely perceptible gesture, Janis’s brooding intensity represents a wholly personal, only occasionally overbearing, alternative; an entirely different point of view. Time and again he tells us that there are higher goods than surface polish or slickness and in the valedictory F minor Mazurka, Op. 68 No. 4 he conveys a dark night of the soul indeed, an emotion almost too desolating for public utterance.
Janis is no less remarkable in Liszt, whether in the brief but intriguing Sans mesure (a first performance and recording), in a Sonetto 104 del Petrarca as tear-laden as any on record and in a final Liebestod of an exhausting ardour and focus. Chopin’s E flat Waltz is played with interesting variants in the Yale edition and, overall, this record confirms a daunting legend. Janis remains in every sense a ‘true romantic’; beneath a now-frail exterior burns an inner light of an overwhelming and transcending strength.'
Janis is no less remarkable in Liszt, whether in the brief but intriguing Sans mesure (a first performance and recording), in a Sonetto 104 del Petrarca as tear-laden as any on record and in a final Liebestod of an exhausting ardour and focus. Chopin’s E flat Waltz is played with interesting variants in the Yale edition and, overall, this record confirms a daunting legend. Janis remains in every sense a ‘true romantic’; beneath a now-frail exterior burns an inner light of an overwhelming and transcending strength.'
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