Liszt: Transcriptions from Operas

"Liszt's operatic transcriptions and paraphrases are musical succulence itself, and here…are another seven, all romantic, and stylishly dispatched by [Han Chen]…best, perhaps, is the opener, the overture to Weber's Oberon, a superbly felicitous transcription of a perfect piece…[but] the Fantasie on Themes from Weber's Der Freischütz is magnificent" (Sunday Times, January 2016)

"Despite his youth and relative inexperience, [Chen] fully merits his place in the series as a mature Liszt player par excellence and an artist to be reckoned with…[his] varied touch and tone makes it a journey one is eager to take without a break, though not without making you wonder afresh how on earth Liszt found the time to simply notate the music, never mind actually composing it" (Gramophone)

"It isn't just Chen's assured, elegant and totally effortless technique that blows me away, it's also his idiomatic flair, his use of color and touch to convey character, plus a gift for textural variety and differentiation that one associates with golden age legends. Listen to the Bellini Sonnambula Fantasy's carefully sculpted climaxes and how the final pages' buckets of chords and runs sing out with no strain, struggle or imbalance whatsoever. The Polonaise from I Puritani swaggers with joyful scintillation, while the convoluted thematic juggling in the Freischütz Fantasy conveys a sense of lightness and play that Leslie Howard's premier recording keeps under wraps. The engineering replicates how a well-regulated concert grand sounds in a small hall with a luminous yet not overly resonant acoustic. Need I say more?" (ClassicsToday June 2016)