Composers: Arnold Schoenberg | Erik Satie | Franz Liszt | Reinbert de Leeuw
Episode XIV, 2 December 2015: Late Liszt.
Thea Derks follows the musical trail of Reinbert de Leew on the basis of her biography Reinbert de Leeuw, man or melody.
In the 60s the name Erik Satie became inextricably bound up with Reinbert de Leeuw after his gramophone recording of his early piano music. The same goes slightly to a lesser degree for the late works by Franz Liszt, who de Leeuw also had discovered during his study at the Muzieklyceum in Amsterdam. It fascinated him how Liszt stretched the boundaries of tonality further and further in pieces such as Nuages gris en La lugubre gondola. This way he was ahead of Arnold Schönberg’s atonal music.
However De Leeuw was not the only one, the pianist Toos Onderdenwijgaard also promoted the late piano music by Liszt, who in their extent and tonal ambiguity try the performer and the audience to the utmost. She put it on the record in 1977 a year before Reinbert de Leeuw. Her teacher’s father had studied by Liszt himself, so that she knew firsthand who his ideal interpretation sounded.
Toos Onderdenwijngaard was one of the founders of the Franz Liszt Kring, which was at the basis of the prestigious Franz Liszt Piano Competition.
1. Franz Liszt: Nuages gris
Reinbert de Leeuw, piano.
2. Franz Liszt: La lugubre gondola II
Toos Onderdenwijngaard, piano.
3. Franz Liszt: from Via crucis: part 1 to 3
Nederlands Kamerkoor en Reinbert de Leeuw, piano.
4. Franz Liszt: from Via crucis: part 13 to 15
Reinbert de Leeuw, piano.
Recording engineer: Ger van den Beuken
