Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works. Leif Ove Andsnes, piano; Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. Sony Classical 19802856672. Total time: 62 minutes.
DIGITAL REVIEW — In his latest recording, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes ventures onto the risky terrain of compilations, collaborating with the 26 voices of the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir on an album titled Liszt: Via Crucis and Solo Piano Works.
Compilations are tricky ventures that rarely satisfy — especially if you have a pianist of Andsnes’ calibre on the cast list. He is a compelling musician, and when you connect his prowess with a much-loved work such as the Liszt’s Consolations (Six Pensées poétiques) and then program it at the end of the album, it becomes an opportunity lost rather than an opportunity gained.
Via Crucis (The Fourteen Stages of the Cross) holds center stage on the album, a listening journey that feels askew. My advice is to enter the album from track 16, and you will be invited into the contemplative world of Liszt’s’ Consolations, a rare beauty for solo piano. Here, Andsnes’ consistently refined approach and commitment to truth surfaces.
Throughout his interpretation of these six deceptively challenging poetic musings, Andsnes effortlessly sustains the singing line, allowing moods and emotional narratives to unfold and dynamics to unwrap with precision and naturalness. Our senses are calmed. The moment is a distraction from the maddening world. Curl up with Andsnes’ Consolations. You will have them on repeat.
Via Crucis was not performed in Liszt’s lifetime. He began the work in 1866 and completed it 1878 while living in Villa d’Este in Italy. It was composed during Liszt’s final creative period at the time he was re-connecting to his devotion to Catholicism, a spiritual journey that began during adolescence and continued in this later period in earnest.
Liszt offered his publisher three versions of the work — one choral, one for organ solo, and one for piano solo — but it was rejected on the basis that it was too original and would not sell. The work recently has gained most of its attention through two recordings featuring Dutch pianist Reinbert de Leeuw: one with the Netherlands Chamber Choir and a previous version with Collegium Vocale Gent.
The programmatic work depicts the 14 Stages of the Cross from Christ’s sentencing to being laid in the tomb. The text, chosen by Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, combines Gregorian chant, the Lutheran liturgy, and the Latin, German, and Aramaic Languages. The use of multiple languages and the subject matter itself are two possible reasons why Liszt’s publisher believed he could not find a place for the work in its time.
The work is a series of 15 musical interludes, some less than two minutes, and much of the writing is sparse. A little like Tavener.
The question for contemporary interpreters is how to approach the work for listeners in our more secularist age — listeners who may not be aware of the Christian rituals and meditations associated with the Stages of the Cross and the precise content of each depiction. The answer might be to focus less on the programmatic religious aspect and instead consider the vignettes as tone poems that seek to communicate emotion of a scene. This is the feeling we get in this album. We are transported by emotion.
The most interesting compositional aspect of Via Crucis is the democratic relationship between piano and choir. The function of the piano is not, as you might expect, an accompaniment to the choir — and hence perhaps why Andsnes became interested in this project. The piano functions as an independent soloist, and in its interactions with the choral ensemble is as a collaborating voice, akin to the role of the piano in chamber music.
This recording is exemplary for its precise expression. The overall approach is pious, though not overly reverential, and clever for its judicious use of reverberation by producer Jack Ryan Smith, the minimal vibrato in the choral delivery directed by Grete Pedersen, and Andsnes’ careful attention to pedaling. These interpretative choices allow for a clear narrative to speak and for the harmonies to ring as truly as possible. It also appears that the engineers have leaned into the natural acoustics of Oslo’s Ris Kirke, where the piece was recorded.
In the work, Liszt’s austere piano writing is juxtaposed with the warmth of the choral music. Andsnes approaches the simplicity of the sometimes one-handed melodic lines with a sense of elegance, refraining from any romantic ebb and flow and thereby staying true to Liszt’s commitment to austerity in this late creative period. The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir rests on its impeccable intonation throughout and shows its best in “Station VIII: Die Frauen von Jerusalem” in its negotiation of the chromatic lines and demonstrates its full-bodied sound in “Station IX: Jesus fällt zum dritten Mal.” Overall, the recording makes its imprint through its authenticity and the close collaboration between Andsnes and the choir.
