Search - Georges Cziffra :: Live at Senlis

GEORGES CZIFFRA 'the great wizard 'live' at SENLIS!

arffizc268@hotmail.com Alan Albes | London | 05/06/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In 1973 Georges Cziffra purchased the ruined shell of the Royale Chapelle St. Frambourg at SENLIS {France} to create his FONDATION CZIFFRA which enshrined the Auditorium Franz Liszt - a grand memorial to his great compatriot. It is now a `Temple of the Arts' dedicated to helping aspiring young musicians and continuing where the `Concours Cziffra' {established in 1968 at Versailles} left off - Cziffra thus fulfilling his promise to Marguerite Long to ensure his knowledge was passed onto young pianists. Cziffra's programme is a compilation of two recitals given at the Fondation Cziffra in 1978 and 1981 {a few months before the tragic house fire that killed his only son György Cziffra Jr. making Cziffra become a recluse}. Ravel's `Jeux d'eau' , the first of two fountains in this recital, is played with very little pedal, dazzling articulation, and with a sense of mysterious undercurrents in the music as is Liszt's ` Les jeux d'eau a la Ville d'Este' which erupts in a cascade of dazzling splendour - the tremolandos in the latter piece scintillating and onomatopoeic. Liszt's 3rd Liebestraume sweeps to a soaring impassioned climax and with a poetic contemplative ending, while the Etude `Appassionata', which is scorchingly frenetic, brings forth cheers from an enraptured audience. Gnomenreigen is a very demonic scherzo in Cziffra's hands - the gnomes {critics?} sound wicked and positively spiteful! Cziffra's Chopin deepened as he matured; the Polonaise in A flat no longer sounds lean and somewhat dandified but given a very powerful performance which is orchestral in conception. The Polonaise-Fantasie too has weight and depth with a nice improvisatory feeling; the `piu lento' middle section in B major very expressive like a Nocturne. Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu fairly ripples along building to a yearning impassioned climax - the famous melody of the middle section tenderly expressive; and the Variations Op.12 {not so often played in recital} are performed with great improvisatory style, teasing caprice and brilliant finger work - Cziffra's final thunderclap eliciting an enthusiastic ovation. Saint - Saëns `Etude en forme de Valse' with its concoction of fearsome technical hurdles - double notes, octaves, rapid scales and arpeggios - all intrepidly surmounted by Cziffra, is an ideal final show stopper. For all those listeners who never had the opportunity to hear Cziffra, the ultimate Lisztian virtuoso `live' - well, now here's your chance. Perhaps everything isn't quite as astoundingly effortless and mesmerizing as it was when I heard him `live' in 1959; but it is still pretty impressive."

BRING BACK CZIFFRA

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 08/14/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"He is seriously overdue a revival. The better I get to know him the better I like him. This is a well-remastered disc apart from some slight clatter in the top notes (unless that was the piano)and it starts brilliantly with an effortless and very French-sounding Ravel Jeux d'Eaux. I just do not buy the view of Cziffra as some great liberty taker. Compared with the 19th century school he was obviously nothing of the kind, but he seems to me more straightforward not only than Horowitz but than that pianistic totem in this age of correctness Richter. I listened to all three of them in Chopin's Polonaise-fantasy. This is a piece pervaded by strange harmonies, full of inner loneliness and unhappiness, of the kind that break through the smiling surface of the B minor sonata and the Barcarolle that were roughly contemporary. Horowitz gives it with a brittle extroversion and show of defiance that conveys a nerve-twanging desperation. Richter's account is extraordinary -- introverted, forlorn, febrile here and there, and inhabiting another world. It's sheer greatness, but you would not recognise his tempi from the printed score. Where is the correctness? Cziffra's reading is grand, beautiful and sensitive, not the equal of Richter's but a lot more 'correct'. Two of the other Chopin numbers are minor efforts, the Fantasy-impromptu and the variations op 12, both beautifully done. The last is the A flat polonaise, and repeated hearings of this and the other two versions of it that I have from him now make me think that this is a better and more forceful version than the one on his 2-disc all-Chopin set but not overall as good as the one that serves as a filler to his set of the Chopin studies.The rest is virtuoso stuff. The 4 Liszt pieces come to less than 20 minutes, which is something like my limit for Liszt even played by Cziffra. Cziffra performs a minor miracle -- he takes Liszt out of the music-to-vacuum-by category that he normally occupies in my prejudice-set. I refuse to believe that even Liszt himself had a greater technique than Cziffra -- there is no such thing. Arrau once said that these days the ultimate technique, the technique of Liszt, was not to be found. That was true of him, great player though he was, but true of Michelangeli? true of Cziffra? -- nonsense. When your head has finished whirling after Cziffra's Liszt-pyrotechnics you can lighten up with Saint-Saens' En Forme de Valse. I am very fond of Saint-Saens, and actually I like En Forme de Valse, but I was taken aback by the remark in the leaflet that it is 'one of the finest examples of his enormous output'. In my opinion it is a lot of silly notes, as Humphrey Burton once said. Oddly, I think I can imagine an even more spectacular performance than Cziffra gives, and for all I know or care Kissin or one of them may have already obliged. This one will do me very well and I recommend it. I recommend the whole disc. I recommend this great player."