Franz Liszt (1811-1886) :
A - Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major (1849)
B - Concerto No. 2 in A Major (1857)

Franz Liszt composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 over a 19-year period; the main themes date from 1830, while the final version is dated 1849. He wrote drafts for his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1839; he then put away the manuscript for a decade. When he returned to the concerto, he revised and scrutinized it repeatedly. The Second Piano Concerto premiered in January 1857.

Any pianist who tackles Franz Liszt’s great works must possess outstanding skills in many areas. Technical prowess is absolutely necessary to play the extremely difficult score, as is immense physical energy in order to compete with the hefty onslaughts from the orchestra. But a great awareness of the unusual conceptual forms, refined energy and passion are also required to make the keyboard sing. At the beginning of the Sixties Sviatoslav Richter seemed to possess all these attributes in an ideal equilibrium. With youthful energy he catapulted powerful chords against the First Concerto’s defiant theme in the orchestra, offering resistance only to join in later with the lyrical maelstrom of the orchestra. In the Second Concerto Richter exchanges heroic brilliance for an elegiac air, then becomes capricious with graceful arpeggios and a lyrical, firm melodiousness that fires the course of the work. In the Finale these twists and turns come together to form an emphatic single strand of spirited theme, brilliant cadenza and blustering orchestra.
The impressive sound was captured by the highly dedicated Mercury recording team.

Recording: July 1961 at Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London, by C.R. Fine.

The "golden age" of recordings was from 1955 to 1965, at the beginning of the LP and the stereo era, where pure vacuum tube amplification helped produce recordings demonstrating unparalleled fidelity and warmth, lifelike presence and illumination.

This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the original analogue studio tapes through to the cutting head, and was pressed with virgin vinyl at Pallas. More information under http://www.pure-analogue.com