Franz Liszt takes pride of place on Mariam Batsashvili’s second Warner Classics album, primarily devoted to evocative, technically formidable piano transcriptions of opera, song, and organ music. Among the works are Liszt’s realization of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a spectacular take on Bellini’s opera La sonnambula from Liszt’s great rival, Sigismund Thalberg, and Harold Bauer’s adaptation of César Franck’s Prélude, Fugue et Variation. Speaking of Liszt, Mariam Batsashvili says: “Whether he was making transcriptions of operatic arias or art songs, he set out to evoke the feelings of the original work’s dramatic and poetic worlds without any exaggeration, and in my view he succeeded in this with great strength and truth.”
Mariam Batsashvili: Romantic Piano Masters
