Rinaldo Zhok dedicates a disc honoring Verdi’s bicentenary with Liszt’s complete operatic transcriptions and paraphrases, which he brings together for the first time on CD in their entirety.
Building on from Liszt adaptations, Rinaldo highlights what one might define the Verdian spirituality, projects the dramatic force of the personages of the arias, and creates a theater without words and without images, suggested only by the sounds of the piano. The resulting exchange is quite wonderful: Liszt giving Verdi his hands, Verdi giving Liszt his voice.
Libretto in English, German, and Spanish. Program notes by Joanna Wyld.
Released in January 2014.