Prima Facie Records

Kenneth Hamilton Plays Liszt Volume 3: Demonic and Divine (PFCD251/252) £15.00/£20.00

Kenneth Hamilton piano
An Official Specialist Classical Chart Top 10 Recording

CD1

1. Invocation (from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses) (6’50”)
2. Sancta Dorothea (2’27”)
3-4 . Scherzo and March (Wilde Jagd) (13’15”)
5. La Lugubre Gondola 2 (8’05”)
6. Fantasy-Piece (Liebesszene und Fortunas Kugel) from Adalbert von Goldschmidt‘s Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) (11‘07”)
7. Wagner/Liszt: Lohengrins Verweis an Elsa (3‘04”)
8. Pater Noster (from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses) (2’42”)
9-11. Liszt/Ferruccio Busoni: Fantasy and Fugue on the Chorale “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” from Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète (26’36”)
Total Time 74'11''

CD2

1. Cavatina from Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (5’35”)
2. Reminiscences of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (revised version, 1885-6, first recording) (11’40”)
3. Two Legends: 1. St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds (9’25”)
4. Two Legends: 2. St Francis of Paolo Walking on the Waves (8’10”)
5. Andante Lagrimoso (from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses) (8’02”)
6. Cantique d’amour (from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses) (6’07”)
7. Toccata (1’22”)
8. Wiegenlied (Cradle Song) (for Arthur Friedheim) (3’46”)
9. Miserere d’après Palestrina (from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses) (3’58”)
10. Unstern (Dark Star) (5’29”)
11. Mephisto Waltz No.1 (11’14”)
Total Time 74'54''

Reviews

"This magnificent recital matches technical expertise with a rare imagination – two essential qualities of any performance of Liszt’s piano music. Let me note a deep historical understanding of the composer’s evolving style, from transcendental bravura to late introspection. Kenneth Hamilton ticks all these boxes.“ John France, Music Web International

"Hamilton’s grasp of the huge Lisztian canon must make him the envy of many colleagues. Hamilton is especially persuasive in those two proto-Impressionist works from the early 1860s, the St Francis Legends. 'St Francis of Assisi’s Sermon to the Birds' is given a lilting delicacy perfectly suited to its topic, while 'St Francis de Paule Walking on the Waves' strikes just the right tone of heroism amid a tempest. His reading of the First Mephisto Waltz is both original in concept and strikingly effective." Patrick Rucker, Gramophone

"The third volume of Kenneth Hamilton’s impressive themed survey of Liszt’s solo piano music... The haunted, inconclusive ending of Unstern – Dark Star... sets up his volcanic performance of the famous Mephisto Waltz no.1... everything introduced by Hamilton's entertaining and erudite booklet notes. It’s almost worth getting the album for these alone, the context he gives for Liszt’s life and musical invention is remarkably helpful – so is Hamilton's playing." Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3 Record Review

"Throughout, Hamilton plays, as always, with verve, sensitivity, and enviable ease – often with a light touch that helps him avoid bombastic banging. A delightful ear-opener!" Ralph P. Locke, the arts fuse

"On Kenneth’s Hamilton’s third volume of themed Liszt albums for Prima Facie there is much to admire – some excellent and imaginative repertoire choices, Hamilton’s superbly detailed and informative booklet notes, and some glowing and ecstatic performances. Hamilton is truly a 21st century Lisztian acolyte, an academic with a refreshingly undidactic approach, possessing sufficient technique to transform his interpretative ideas and discoveries into reality. He describes himself as “trying to imagine myself a student of Liszt”, and though he doesn’t sound like a 19th century pianist per se, there are elements of his interpretative philosophy that seem to be derived directly from a deep knowledge and understanding of the style." Jonathan Dobson, International Piano Magazine

"Only someone with a brilliant technique can dare to play such a pianistically demanding programme, and this is certainly true of Kenneth Hamilton. The mastery of the two-part piece Scherzo and March from 1850, with its trill figures, runs and leaps, is just one example that demands respect. What is striking overall is the precision, even strictness, of the approach." Professor Klaus Trapp, Klassik Heute

About this Album

Volume 3 of Kenneth Hamilton's Liszt series shares with its predecessors his extraordinary passion for Liszt’s music. He has intensively studied Liszt’s often ignored interpretative advice, and immersed himself in the reminiscences and recordings of his pupils. In fact, he has himself tried to think like a latter-day Liszt student. His efforts have been encouraged by an exciting recent rediscovery in the Czech Republic: the score and manuscript collection of August Stradal, one of Liszt’s last students. This allows Hamilton to offer here the first recording of a new, very different version of the famous Fantasy on Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, conceived shortly before Liszt’s death in 1886.

Other novelties include revisions and insights passed down by Stradal, Berthold Kellermann, Artur Friedheim, August Göllerich and Bernhard Stavenhagen for the popular St Francis Legends, for the eloquently ecclesiastical Invocation, and for the demonically coruscating Scherzo and March. Hamilton has similarly studied intensively Ferruccio Busoni’s tremendous transcription of the Fantasy and Fugue on Meyerbeer’s “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam”, and brought several passages into closer communion with Liszt’s original score for organ/pedal piano. He has likewise adopted from Liszt’s later orchestral version some sensuous elaborations for the first Mephisto Waltz.

Although also featuring rarities such as the fragrant Sancta Dorothea, and the outrageously Wagnerian Fantasy on Goldschmidt’s Seven Deadly Sins, this thought-provoking Liszt recording truly refreshes regularly played repertoire – supplemented, as usual, by Hamilton’s entertainingly informative liner notes.

Credits

Cover Image: Faust, Marguerite and Mephistopheles (postcard: anonymous artist)
Photos of Kenneth Hamilton: Andrew Bi, Singapore/Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music, Bangkok
Recorded at Cardiff University School of Music on 4-5 February, 2023; 22-23 July 2023; 3-4 February 2024; 30-31 July, 2024; 8-9 February 2025
Piano: Steinway Model D (Hamburg) 617217 (tracks 3-4), Steinway Model D (Hamburg) 572883 (all other tracks)
Piano preparation: Ulrich Gerhartz
Piano technician: Gavin Crooks
Recording Producer: Stephen Plews
Recording Editor: Philip Hardman
Booklet Editor: Monika Hennemann

You can read Kenneth Hamilton's sleeve notes from this CD on the Prima Facie blog, Recitative.

Sancta Dorothea

Kenneth Hamilton performs and discusses Sancta Dorothea from the Demonic and Divine album:

Described by the Moscow Kommersant as “an outstanding virtuoso – one of the finest players of his generation”, by Tom Service in The Guardian as “pianist, author, lecturer and all-round virtuoso”, and by Klassik Heute as a “pianist, scholar, radical thinker and philosopher”, Kenneth Hamilton is well-known worldwide as a recitalist and recording artist of emotional depth and striking originality. His latest releases have enjoyed especially exceptional critical acclaim: Volume 1 of Kenneth Hamilton Plays Liszt: Death and Transfiguration was selected as a Gramophone “Best Classical Album of 2022”; Volume 2, Salon and Stage was the Guardian’s “Best Classical Recording of 2023”. Hamilton’s After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford University Press) is one of the most internationally influential books on Classical piano performance, and has been translated into Italian, Hungarian and, most recently, Mandarin.

Hamilton is a familiar artist on the BBC in the UK, and a keen communicator, enthusiastically promoting the understanding and appreciation of music. He contributes a regular column, “Musings of a Musician”, for International Piano Magazine. One of his BBC broadcasts, in the series The Essay: My Life in Music, was described by Sir Nicholas Kenyon in The Observer as “revelatory [...] touching [...] a personal story of loss and death that reaches out from the radio. That is what broadcasting is all about”.

Hamilton has also appeared on radio and television in Germany, France, the US, Canada, Turkey, Singapore, Thailand, China and Russia, including a performance of Chopin’s first piano concerto with the Istanbul Chamber Orchestra on Turkish Television, and in a dual role as pianist and presenter for the television programme Mendelssohn in Scotland, broadcast by Deutsche Welle Channel.

Hamilton remains deeply grateful for his pianistic training in Scotland with Lawrence Glover and Ronald Stevenson. His recordings of Stevenson’s music, and of works by a host of other composers, including Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Grainger, Godowsky, Pedro Faria Gomes and John Casken have received outstanding reviews: “played with understanding and brilliance” (Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3 Record Review); “precise control and brilliance” (Andrew Clements, The Guardian); “thrilling” (Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone); “a gorgeous recording and excellent performance” (Jack Sullivan, American Record Guide); “this is real music-making, not subservient reciting from a sacred text (Ralph Locke, ArtsFuse).

Hamilton is a Professor of Music at Cardiff University in Wales. He has been a visiting artist and guest professor at many institutions worldwide, including the Franz Liszt Academy in Hungary, the St Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, and the University of Miami in the US. Travel restrictions permitting, he gives regular masterclasses in China and the Far East.