Franz Liszt - Schwanengesang (Can Çakmur)

Information

Composer: Franz Liszt

• Schwanengesang, S. 560 (after Schubert's D. 957)
• Valses oubliées, S. 215

Can Çakmur, piano

Date: 2020

Label: BIS

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Review

This is Can Çakmur’s second album for BIS. The 23-year-old Turkish pianist’s first, which included works by Beethoven-Liszt, Schubert, Haydn, Fazıl Say, Fuyuhiko Sasaki and a truly remarkable Bartók Out of Doors, was released last year, hot on the heels of his victory at the 2018 Hamamatsu Competition. This new disc presents his bona fides as a Liszt interpreter, and they are impressive.

The choice to record the entire Schwanengesang is an audacious one. This collection of late Schubert songs was compiled posthumously by the publisher Haslinger. Liszt had played Schubert song transcriptions in his famous Viennese concerts during April and May 1838. They proved so popular that, within a year, he had transcribed another 38 of them, including all 14 of Schwanengesang. Individual songs have not left the standard repertory since but it is rare to hear the cycle as a whole. In hands as gifted as Çakmur’s, however, their cumulative effect is all but overwhelming.

Çakmur creates his own ordering of the songs, as Liszt himself had done with Haslinger’s. The key here, however, is not the progression of moods but the depth and adroitness of their characterisation. They begin with ‘Liebesbotschaft’, as delicate and ardent a love letter as one can imagine. The impassioned soldier’s soliloquy of ‘Kriegers Ahnung’ shifts seamlessly between anguish and reverie. ‘Abschied’, conjuring insouciant leave-taking of the familiar, is paired with ‘In der Ferne’, and the chill of having left without farewell or blessing. Stark, desolate, terrifying imagery is evoked in pieces like ‘Die Stadt’, ‘Doppelgänger’ and ‘Der Atlas’, while others such as ‘Ständchen’ and ‘Taubenpost’ are lent an operatic urgency and dimension without sacrificing their essential simplicity. In each instance Çakmur’s conception is vividly persuasive and the pianistic wherewithal abetting his vision secure.

The four Valses oubliées, composed between 1881 and 1884, provide the perfect pendant to the Schubert settings from four decades earlier. Most striking are Çakmur’s sane tempos. In contrast to the breakneck speed usual for these pieces, he follows Liszt’s indications and opts for tempos that are actually danceable. Only the second and third waltzes bear a dedication, both to Olga von Meyendorff, Liszt’s close Weimar companion in later years, and this may account for the gentle tenderness enveloping Çakmur’s readings. The first waltz exhibits luscious pianissimo and legato leggiero, while the slightly antic second has a lovely music-box quality with all attendant rhythmic subtlety. Meanwhile, the delightfully playful third waltz creates a magic all its own.

Given the wealth and range of his musical imagination, not to mention his genuine pianistic gifts, I believe Can Çakmur is someone from whom we can confidently and happily expect to hear a great deal more.

-- Patrick Rucker, Gramophone

More reviews:

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Jan/Liszt-piano-BIS2530.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Schwanengesang-Can-Cakmur/dp/B08FT5TRCR

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Franz Liszt (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, and music teacher. Liszt gained renown in Europe for his virtuosic skill as a pianist and in the 1840s he was considered to be the greatest pianist of all time. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent composers of the "New German School". Some of his most notable musical contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and making radical departures in harmony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Liszt

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Can Çakmur (b. 1997) is the First prize winner of the 10th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2018 and the Scottish International Piano Competition in 2017. He studied with Diane Andersen privately and with Grigory Gruzman at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar. A dedicated chamber musician, Can Çakmur’s regular partners are Veriko Tchum­buridze and Dorukhan Doruk (as the Vecando Trio, formed in 2021). His recordings for BIS Records have received critical acclaim worldwide. In 2022 he was appointed to a piano professorship at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance in London.

http://www.cancakmur.com/

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