Llŷr Williams – Wagner Without Words (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Pianist Llyr Williams explores Wagner’s rich and evocative sound-world from a different perspective. Featuring insightful arrangements of Richard Wagner’s operas by Franz Liszt and Glenn Gould (as well as Williams’ own arrangement of music from Parsifal), at the centre of the programme is a selection of Wagner’s own piano pieces – many of which were written earlier in his compositional career, hinting at the grand operatic masterworks which were yet to come.

Wagner’s operas have inspired innumerable piano transcriptions from Carl Tausig to Zoltan Kocsis but those to which pianists most frequently turn are by Liszt. to the half dozen of these Llyr Williams has selected, he adds three more: his own arrangements of Glenn Gould’s Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Prelude to Die Meistersinger transcriptions as well as his own version of three scenes from Parsifal. It makes for a varied and rewarding programme enriched by Williams’s velvet touch, meticulous voicing, attention to detail and judiciously graded dynamics. For me, he is at his best in the music from Parsifal (his transcription of the Good Friday Music is not dissimilar to that by Joseph Rubinstein), quite beautifully realised, as is the spaciously phrased Liebestod and the less familiar (but no less powerful) ‘Santo spirito cavaliere’ from Rienzi. What I miss in Williams’s playing is that last ounce of tension and sense of mounting excitement (Entry of the Guests and Die Meistersinger). Here and in his delivery of the Spinning Chorus (compare with the carefree Paderewski on his famous 1924 recording), accuracy and caution do not take him far enough beyond the printed page. Williams punctuates the transcriptions with some of Wagner’s original piano works (he admits that he learnt of their existence, surprisingly, only last year). If you too are one of those unaware that the Sorcerer of Bayreuth wrote anything for piano then you haven’t missed anything. The interminable Fantasy, Op 3, written as a 19-year-old, dribbles along with bits of second-hand Bach, Weber and Mendelssohn popping up here and there, underpinned by a portentous Beethovenian solemnity. Stephan Moller in his 1992 recording (Koch, 6/93) takes a livelier view of this, though cannot compete with Williams’s tonal finesse. The five other mercifully shorter works, no more than period curios, confirm the wisdom of Wagner’s decision to leave piano composition and transcriptions to his father-in-law. –Gramophone

It’s an interesting idea: a selection of keyboard transcriptions from Wagner’s operas, interleaved with piano music by Wagner himself But it also raises the problem that any unknown works by this ultra-celebrated figure are unknown for a good reason. Wagner’s early Fantasy in F sharp minor is a promising large-scale statement from a composer aged 19. But as with the Sonata written for Mathilde Wesendonck two decades later, the musical material lacks the focus and individuality that makes for rewarding listening, and the other Wagner items included in this programme are very slight. They do, however, work well as interludes between the much more elaborate operatic fantasies, which is where Llyr Williams’s fine pianism comes into its own. Among the Liszt transcriptions, the ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan und Isolde shines out as a masterwork in its own right; its surging waves ofsound are superbly shaped and paced by Williams, who has also made his own transcriptions of three scenes from Parsifal. These include his remarkable conjuring of the deep bell sounds of the castle of Momsalvat, although some Lisztian daring would have been welcome in the exotic sound-world of ‘Parsifal and the Flower Maidens’, where Williams’s approach is a shade cautious. But he excels in the gorgeously extravagant ‘Santo spirito cavaliere’ from Rienzi, conjuring splendour from figuration that can easily sound overwritten when played on a modern piano. And the ‘Spinning Chorus ‘from The Flying Dutchman is delivered with an authentic touch of Lisztian charm. –BBC Music Magazine, Malcolm Hayes

Tracklist:
01. Llŷr Williams – Entry of the Guests (10:39)
02. Llŷr Williams – Fantasy (26:01)
03. Llŷr Williams – Spinning Chorus (06:29)
04. Llŷr Williams – Song without Words (01:49)
05. Llŷr Williams – Elsas Bridal Procession (09:06)
06. Llŷr Williams – Zürich Waltzes (01:08)
07. Llŷr Williams – Siegfrieds Rhine-Journey (13:21)
08. Llŷr Williams – Liebestod (07:50)
09. Llŷr Williams – Scenes from Parsifal – Transformation Music (08:35)
10. Llŷr Williams – Scenes from Parsifal – Parsifal and the Flower Maidens (06:22)
11. Llŷr Williams – Scenes from Parsifal – Good Friday Music (06:25)
12. Llŷr Williams – In das Album der Fürstin M (02:54)
13. Llŷr Williams – Santo spirito cavaliere (09:35)
14. Llŷr Williams – Sonata for the Book of Mrs M W (12:47)
15. Llŷr Williams – Walhall (05:47)
16. Llŷr Williams – Albumblatt for Mrs Betty Schott (04:28)
17. Llŷr Williams – Prelude to The Meistersinger from Nürnberg (09:13)