Wagner: Transcriptions for solo piano by August Stradal, Volume One
The Czech-born pianist and writer August Stradal (1860-1930) — a student of Bruckner and disciple of Liszt — was one of the more prolific transcribers of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, producing a vast quantity of piano music, including Liszt's orchestral works, most of the Bruckner symphonies, a good deal of the Baroque (not least a huge amount of Bach) and much more, most of it phenomenally difficult to play. This series of recordings presents his Wagner transcriptions, cast in the best barnstorming virtuoso tradition.
Juan Guillermo Vizcarra, piano
Listen To This Recording:
-
Die Walküre
- ‘Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond’ (Siegmund’s Love-Song)
- Der Ritt der Walküren (The Ride of the Valkyries)
- Schluss des letzten Aufzuges (End of the last Act)
- Siegfried: Waldweben (Forest Murmurs)
- Rheinfahrt aus dem Vorspiel (Rhine Journey)
- Trauermusik aus dem letzten Aufzug (Siegfried’s Funeral March)
- No. 1 ‘Der Engel’
- No. 2 ‘Stehe still!’
- No. 3 ‘Im Treibhaus’
- No. 4 ‘Schmerzen’
- No. 5 ‘Träume’
Götterdämmerung
Wesendonck Lieder
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2 reviews for Wagner: Transcriptions for solo piano by August Stradal, Volume One
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Matthew Rye :
“[Götterdämmerung]: …the Funeral March is the conventional concert excerpt, inventively arranged and impressively played here. …[Vizcarra] gives a sensitive and perceptive reading of the cycle as a whole.” The Wagner Journal
Andrew Anderson :
“He [August Stradal] was great pianist and a great admirer of Liszt, and devoted as well to Wagner, or at least to his music. … This is an important pair of discs [Vol. 1 and Vol. 2] for several reasons: they show off Vizcarra’s talents, and all indications are that if the music required more of him, he’d be up to it; they also give us lots of angles on Stradal’s talents as an arranger/composer … and they give us new angles on Wagner’s music. … Vizcarra’s pianistic talent is the real star of these discs. Some of the transcriptions feature so many intertwining strands of music—one, sometimes two of these were originally vocal lines—that differentiating the strands would hardly seem possible for a performer. Vizcarra does better than that, however. By his own admission, he added some vocal lines to the texture that Stradal left out, an omission surely aimed at making the arrangement more accessible to the ordinary prize-winning virtuoso. … And it makes me anxious to see what else Vizcarra has up his very talented sleeve.” –Theater Jones, March 2017