Hannes Pohlit: The Hour of Spirits
"Debut album by the Leipzig pianist with virtuoso rare works by Henze, Enescu, Busoni and Liszt"
For his debut album, Leipzig-based pianist Hannes Pohlit has recorded rarely heard virtuoso piano works on the Blüthner grand piano. Hans Werner Henze's (1926-2012) variations, dedicated to the memory of the singer Lucy Escott, pay homage to the elegance of Italian bel canto and transform the melody of Bellini's aria "Come a me sereno" in adventurous ramifications into the ghostly.
Melodies and sounds in George Enescu's (1881-1955) First Piano Sonata float ghostly in a tone all of their own, leading us through Romanian landscapes of the soul in dark colors and sensitive vibrations. This highly complex work has only been available on a few CD releases to date; Hannes Pohlit is the first German pianist to have recorded the sonata.
Franz Liszt's (1811-1886) most famous organ work - a key work comparable in scope and difficulty to his Piano Sonata in B minor - was performed in 1855 for the inauguration of the large organ in Merseburg Cathedral. In the transcription for piano by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), the pianist pulls out all the stops on the Blüthner Aliquot grand piano, from the highly expressive fantasia to the rushing fugue, and in the meditative Adagio gives plenty of room for the warm, singing timbres of the instrument. As a short "encore" and tribute to the arranger, the program is supplemented by Ferruccio Busoni's Preludio No.1.
The recordings were made in 2021 at the Media Campus Villa Ida (Leipzig) and were funded by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig.
Hannes Pohlit (* 1976 in Heidelberg) studierte in Frankfurt/Main, München, Leipzig und Weimar Komposition, Klavier und Dirigieren. Den Schwerpunkt seines reichen Repertoires bilden das Klavierwerk von Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy und Sergej Rachmaninoff. Als Blüthner Artist ist er einem der traditionsreichsten Klavierhersteller eng verbunden, dessen Instrumente er aufgrund ihres gesanglichen Tons besonders schätzt. In 2014, he was artist in residence at the "Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte" founded by Hans Werner Henze in Montepulciano/Italy. Hannes Pohlit has also repeatedly explored the music of Franz Liszt as a composer and created a Chapelle de François Liszt for the Thüringer Symphoniker for the Liszt Year 2011 as well as twelve Paraphrases de Tango for solo piano, which continue the Lisztian tradition of virtuoso paraphrases and will soon also be released on CD by the classical label querstand. Hannes Pohlit teaches as an artistic assistant at the FRANZ LISZT Weimar University of Music.
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