Franz Liszt and Self Love / Franz Liszt et l’Amour de Soi

FRANZ LISZT — ANNÉES DE PÈLERINAGE — YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE — CHÂTEAU D’AULTERIBE — 8–11 SEPTEMBER 2022 — SUZANA BARTAL — 2018

The concert of the three years of pilgrimage presented in Aulteribe Château, in fact originally, a medieval castle essential in the castle network of Auvergne protecting the plain and the province, included Jerôme Granjon and Suzana Bartal with two younger pianists, Julien Lespagnol and Shoma Oto. The originality of the three concerts over two days was that the piano was Georges Onslow’s Pleyel piano built in 1846, that is to say, a piano on which Liszt could have played, and the sound is different, the power is different, the harmonics are all different from a modern piano. The CDs are recorded on modern pianos and the truthfulness of the heritage piano is missing and we are slightly deprived of some authenticity. The three concerts integrated small poems illustrating or supporting the music and several interventions of a lecturer trying to explain what we should see in this music, and I say see voluntarily since the lecturer insisted, from beginning to end, on the fact that Liszt was trying to bring painting and literature inside the music and trying to be all-sensorial, synesthetic, though I am not entirely convinced.