Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works

On his latest album “Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works”, releasing on Aprill 11 2025 for Sony Classical, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes unveils the often forgotten side of the famed virtuoso Franz Liszt - the sacred music that offers a more intimate picture of the man and his deeply held faith.  

With acclaimed vocal ensemble the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, Andsnes has recorded Liszt’s remarkable late work Via Crucis (The Way of the Cross’) for choir and piano. The pianist completes his all-Liszt album with the solo piano work Consolations and two movements from the composer’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses.  

Franz Liszt is often described as the ‘first virtuoso’ - a superstar pianist and composer who invented the piano recital and whose fame and following in the nineteenth century were unprecedented. Much of Liszt’s reputation hangs on sweeping virtuosic showpieces so technically challenging that only Liszt could play them. 

But that is only half the story. In 1847, at the age of just 35, Liszt retired from public performance to focus on writing and teaching. Thirteen years later he took another step back, taking Holy Orders and embarking upon a new life of religious devotion and creative introspection.  

In this later period, a new aesthetic took root in Liszt, one characterized by austere, spare and sometimes inscrutable musical utterances that tended to question more than they assert. ‘I find Liszt’s religious music fascinating,’ says Andsnes, who has lived with Liszt’s music since childhood. ‘This is very different music, with so few notes but with a tension and beauty.’  

One of the major statements of Liszt’s late period was Via Crucis, a journey through the Roman Catholic tradition’s Stations of the Cross for choir and piano, written in Rome in 1866 but considered too unusual by Liszt’s publisher and never performed in the composer’s lifetime. It wasn’t until 1929 that the work was given its first airing, on Good Friday, in the capital of the composer’s native Hungary, Budapest.  

Via Crucis is unlike any other work in the repertoire: a concentrated ritual drama, ranging from liturgical chant to Lisztian chromaticism at its most searching and expressive. It sets a pianist and choir in dialogue with one another, each performing alone as well as together. 

‘This is something very different,’ says Andnsnes. ‘It is incredible, the journey Liszt made as a composer, from this very flamboyant virtuosic style to [Via Crucis], which is very bare, with so few notes, but still an incredible tension and beauty. It points forward to the twentieth century while also building on the tradition of scared music.’ 

The work’s unusual scoring gave Andsnes the opportunity to extend his longstanding collaboration with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir - one of the finest vocal ensembles in the world and a seasoned recording group, consisting of 26 handpicked professional singers.  

‘Via Crucis tells a story about a man who gave his life for others, and at the same time is so much about humanity,’ says Grete Pedersen, artistic director of the choir; ‘it is a piece with a lot of question marks, and I hope listeners will feel that.’ 

‘We live in a world of pain and conflict and Via Crucis offers room for empathy, for philosophical thought, and for the taking-in of different emotions,’ says Andsnes. ‘Audiences seem to be mesmerized by it. It really is a special work in which you can discover so much beauty.’ He likens the work to ‘14 miniature tone poems’. 

The musicians examined the piece extensively before recording it together in Oslo, performing it in concert and attempting to fathom is unusual scoring in which piano and choir are sometimes partners yet sometimes sound diametrically opposed.  

‘It was inspiring to be in the middle of the sound of a choir of this quality,’ says Andsnes; ‘I was inspired by the exacting way Grete and the Soloists’ Choir do these things. Their attention to detail is so great, which is important in music that is so fragile.’ Grete Pedersen comments: ‘if any pianist can make the piano sing, it’s Leif Ove.’ 

Completing the programme is music from two earlier cycles by Liszt that prove there was always more to his musical outlook than showmanship and virtuosity. A mood of thoughtful reflection dominates the composer’s Consolations, written on the eve of the composer’s retirement from public performance and in a paired-back idiom that alternates the lyrical, the winsome and the forthright before dissolving into silence.  

Two of the six movements are cast in the key of E major, the tonality Liszt reserved for music addressing the divine. ‘I find the Consolations so tender, so intimate, speaking from heart to heart,’ says Andsnes. ‘But still, they have different styles, from the spiritual to the dramatic. They are so wonderfully written for the piano; it always sings.’ 

Andsnes’s album also includes two movements from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a magnificent 10-movement cycle written in 1853, inspired by poetry by Alphonse de Lamartine. Andsnes describes the ‘Andante Lagrimoso’ as ‘full of sorrow.’  

The other movement from the set, which ends the album, is something else entirely. Liszt’s ‘Miserere, d’après Palestrina’ is a startling creation written in homage to Italy’s great Renaissance polyphonic composer, which treats a chant-like theme with an almost improvisatory spontaneity. ‘It ends with an enormous flourish,’ says Andsnes, ‘it’s a relief after all the intimate music we have been through. But it also brings us back to the very beginning of the album, as the Via Crucis begins with a Gregorian chant.’ 

 

‘A pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight.’ - New York Times 

‘As usual with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, blend is exquisite, intonation perfect and articulation superlative.’  - Gramophone