Naxos Liszt Complete Piano Music

"The exciting array of prize-winning young pianists and critically-acclaimed, respected artists playing the complete piano music of Liszt distinguishes the series from other collections currently available in the market. Naxos is honoured to be recording laureates of such prestigious competitions as the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, the London World Piano Competition and the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition." - Official site

This ongoing series features Liszt's own compositions for piano, including piano reduction of orchestral works; as well as his transcriptions of Beethoven, Schubert, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Wagner and many other composers. 35 albums have been released so far, and the whole series became available on Spotify recently.

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Naxos: Liszt Complete Piano Music (387 tracks, total time: 40 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. Albums are arranged by volume number. Liner notes to every album is available at Naxos. This series is far from completed - Hyperion's Complete Liszt Piano Music took 99 disks to finish. New releases will be added to the playlist when they appear.

Also check out the audiobook on Liszt's life and works from the Naxos Educational playlist. 

The Contemplative Liszt

It's the Children's Day, let's celebrate it by introducing one of the most beloved-by-kids composers of all time.

Franz Liszt might be best known for his flamboyant and bombastic showpieces, like the Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 in Tom and Jerry, or the finale of Les Preludes that introduced many cartoons. Personally I find his quiet, introspective music much more interesting. The largely contemplative tone poem Orpheus was his son-in-law Richard Wagner's favourite for that reason, the two large scale sacred works, Via Crucis and Christus are some of Liszt's most daring and original compositions I've heard, and deeply moving. I also collected many reflective solo piano pieces in the playlist, like The Blessing of God in Solitude, The Fountain of the Villa d'Este and, of course, the majestic B Minor sonata, by some of the best Liszt interpreters like Claudio Arrau. Sadly Iren Marik was removed from Spotify after I made this playlist, I replaced her recordings with alternatives, and left her links there, let's hope Spotify brings them back soon.

Here's the Spotify playlist: The Contemplative Liszt (62 tracks, 7 hours) Looking forward to your suggestions for more works of this kind to add into the playlist. And since one of the key words that brought most traffic is "best music to study to", I will add that this playlist is perfect for studying too:)