Allesandro Deljavan at Tippet Rise

Alessandro Deljavan at Tippet Rise

2 Alessandro Deljavan

The Performance and the Artist

To record the Chopin Études is the ultimate test of courage and technique in music. You will be compared to the few other great virtuosos in history who have risked their reputations on this lyrical, moving, and supremely demanding pillar of the classical repertoire.

Alessandro came to us in our first season, playing all of the Opus 25 Études, fittingly on Vladimir Horowitz’s piano. Along with George Li, who had just won the Silver Medal at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, the great Russian virtuoso Yevgeny Sudbin, and the legendary Nikolai Demidenko, who had also won the Tchaikovsky, we were exhilarated by meeting and hearing the probing young Italian

virtuoso, Alessandro Deljavan, already a master, whose Chopin was so astonishing that we immediately asked him if we could record it.

You can hear t he result, both the Opus 10 and Opus 25 Études, on the Brilliant Classics album here, available on all streaming platforms and on CD. And on YouTube, here are the complete études.

Video of Alessandro performing the last three of the Opus 25 Études are on our YouTube channel here and Opus 10, Nos. 8–12 are available here.

Alessandro’s études match the brilliance of Horowitz, Cziffra, Argerich, and Hamelin while maintaining a rounded tone and a reflective awareness of the études’ structure and sheer musicality. They are limpid, poignant, fiery, and explosive in turn: Alessandro has all the voices.

Our chief recording engineer, Monte Nickles, worked closely with Alessandro using the Merging Technologies Pyramix digital audio workstation to produce what is a musically perfect and immense achievement.

Alessandro a lso recorded with us an album of Liszt pieces. The album is Liszt Deljavan on the Aeras Music Group label, also available on many streaming sites, such as Apple Music.

6 Alessandro

Deljavan

The four Mephisto Waltzes, along with the Valse-Impromptu and Sonata are in high resolution DXD on our Music Downloads site.

Liszt was fasci nated by Nikolaus Lenau’s version of the Faust legend, where the devil plays the fiddle in a village dance and waltzes away with the village beauty. Having just transcribed Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre (Liszt dedicated his waltzes to Saint-Saëns), the concept of imitating a devilish violin on the piano was a suitable challenge for Liszt. His later versions of the first waltz were part of Liszt’s concept of the music of the future, and closer in a way to Schoenberg (as is the fugue in Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” sonata).

Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor is one of the monuments of the Romantic repertoire, impossibly difficult, but also simple and lyrical in the middle. To have such a perfect performance of it in such high-quality sound makes it the perfect marriage of advanced technology and music history.

The Valse-Impromptu is a combination of Liszt’s diminished-seventh fingerplay inside the waltz melody. Out of Liszt’s trademark atonal jeu perlé introduction comes the concept of the disruption of divine harmonics by the devil and Liszt’s later more atonal pieces like the Csárdás (1881–84) and the 1885 Bagatelle without Tonality. Here Liszt was looking into an atonal future which would dominate the

next century, along with world wars and the disintegration of the established social order. The chaos of the future was apparent to artists as the old century wound down, and discontent with the clichés and placebos of the past accumulated, even as crowds waltzed away the unease at a frenzied pace. The waltz thus became the symbol of its own undoing, Liszt’s anti-waltz. So, Liszt’s waltzes are filled with forward-looking cacophonies that undercut the traditional complacency of the waltz themes. These are not Chopin’s waltzes. They come from a more visionary ethos. Chopin was safely buffered by the ancien régime, while Liszt could hear the undertone of cannons.

Alessandro’s complete Liszt album is available on most streaming platforms as well as on CD.

Adding headphones and even a converter to your computer will allow you to hear Alessandro’s fingers on the keys, as if you were leaning on the piano during the recording session. Overtones and auras, spaces and emotions will emerge that are as close to being there as current technology allows. Alessandro brings out the pristine palette of a Steinway named Véra, 186 years after Chopin astonished the world with an entirely new musical vocabulary.

Like Demidenko, Alessandro studied with Dmitri Bashkirov in Russia, who said of him, “His playing is full of intensive power and contagious artistry.” Another teacher, the great Fou Ts’ong, the first Chinese pianist to achieve international recognition, said of him, “he is one of the most interesting pianists I’ve heard in my life.” The Dallas Morning News captured Alessandro in a phrase: “Jaw-dropping virtuosity and heart-stopping eloquence.”

—Tippet Rise co-founder, Peter Halstead

Liszt Deljavan

When I was 12 years old, I attended the Salzburg Mozarteum, where I was studying the Chopin Concerto No. 2, Op. 21, and two Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt, Nos. 11 and 12. In reality, instead of preparing my lessons with Maestro Risaliti, I was intent on learning Liszt’s Second Concerto. I was completely in love with the initial cello theme, where the piano is an instrument in the orchestra. Spending my days in Austria in the company of Liszt’s concerto, I had not prepared the pieces I actually had to play, and I missed the opportunity to perform at the final masterclass. Since the age of 18, I have played very few of Liszt’s works in my recitals and with orchestra, and when I had the chance I have always been hesitant to do so. But as soon as I had the opportunity to make this recording, I took a giant step toward him, and feel that as a result I made a close connection with his work, of course in my own way.

Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes are not really the simple waltzes as per the romantic tradition. Liszt had conceived the first two Mephistos for orchestra and subsequently transcribed them for solo piano, while the third and fourth waltzes were initially conceived for solo piano. Nikolaus Lenau’s Faust had completely shocked

Liszt; the story of a man who sold his soul to the devil baffled and intrigued the Hungarian composer. The images from which Liszt was inspired in the first two Mephistos are described in such a real, almost violent way that the form of the waltz becomes a true poem for solo piano, and so lends itself to the label of program music. I took certain images that impressed me, and described them in the most sincere (and therefore the most personal) way possible.

The Sonata is a true symphonic poem, but for piano. It is the characterization of the instrument in all its facets. We have again an example of program music, far from the concept of what is a traditional sonata. Continuous narration, without any pause, a constant stream of small sections that are perfectly connected and consequential to one another. As a pianist, I always create the sound of other instruments that I want the audience to imagine they are hearing, but Liszt’s intentions are different: he really wants the instrument to sound as a piano. The figure of Liszt, the great virtuoso, capable of inspiring fanatic adulation from his audience, is thoroughly in contrast with the Liszt of the soul—one who speaks with celestial melodies and transmits violent chords that have very little expression of the melodious. I have performed and taught the sonata during various periods of my life, and I am thrilled to see the release of a recording with my idea of the piece, a piece that perhaps represents the most insurmountable physical-technical-mental obstacle par excellence. A program between the

Mephistos and the Sonata has much to do with the devil. I could very well have continued with the Mephisto Polka or with the Bagatelle sans tonalité that Liszt himself in his manuscript calls four Mephisto waltzes. In the Valse-Impromptu, after an introduction suggesting a dark evolution, there are moments of absolute virtuosic extravagance, pleasant and light, again interspersed with a loving and expressive theme. I immediately liked the idea of combining two moments of Liszt the man in his best inspiration. And what better way to introduce the Devil?

I am very grateful to Tippet Rise Art Center for the extraordinary opportunity I was given to record there. From the first moment in this wonderful corner of the planet, I immediately was aware of the generosity of support for the artist and for everything needed to make an idea as free and inspired as possible and more. From the clean air, to the splendid cuisine (essential for an Italian artist), to the beauty of the accommodations, to the incredible professionalism of every technician involved in the recording—every detail has contributed to the record that I have an immense pleasure to present to you today.

I want to thank Peter and Cathy Halstead most of all for the invitation and for creating the ideal atmosphere for making art.

—Alessandro Deljavan

Alessandro Deljavan Profile

Born of an Italian mother and a Persian father, Alessandro Deljavan began learning to play piano before age two and gave his first performances at three. He has since performed around the world in more than 20 countries, to great acclaim.

A mong Deljavan’s many awards and honors are the Concours musical de France (first prize, Paris, 1996), Hummel Competition (second prize, Bratislava, 2005), Gina Bachauer Young Artist Competition (fifth prize, 2005), Cliburn Competition (John Giordano Discretionary Award, 2009; Raymond E. Buck Discretionary Award, 2013), and Isangyun Competition (second prize, Tongyeong, South Korea, 2010).

He has performed internationally with many leading orchestras, including the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the Orches -

tra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Orchestra Sinfonica Leopolis, Orchestra

Haydn di Bolzano e Trento (tour in Italy and Slovakia), Israel Camerata Orchestra, Wu Han Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra.

He has appeared at festivals such as the Festival International Piano Classique de Biarritz, Festival Chopin à Paris, Piano Intime Series, Glafsfjordens musikfestival, Bologna Festival, Festival Piano Master, Orta Festival, Gradus International Piano Festival, Franz Liszt Festival, Festival Città di Morbegno, Festival Internazionale di Lapedona, Autunno Musicale, the Bogotà International Piano Festival, and Tippet Rise.

His chamber music partners include the Takács Quartet, the Sine Nomine Quartet, and the Brentano Quartet, as well as violinist Alissa Margulis and cellist Alexander Buzlov. Deljavan has toured extensively with the violinist Daniela Cammarano, with whom he has recorded several albums for the Aevea, Brilliant Classics, and OnClassical labels.

Deljavan has appeared in films such as Franz Liszt: The Pilgrimage Years (RAI –Italian TV), Virtuosity (Cliburn /PBS), and numerous live broadcasts on European radio. The live webcasts from the Cliburn competitions (2009 and 2013) were seen by more than a million viewers in 155 countries.

In 2021 Deljavan inaugurated his own imprint, the AERAS Music Group, for which he has released the Bach Goldberg Variations and an album of works by Liszt. Forthcoming are Beethoven’s complete sonatas for violin and piano, an album of Mozart sonatas, and of Schubert.

Deljavan’s discography encompasses more than 60 albums with the Stradivarius, Brilliant Classics, Onclassical, Aevea, Naxos, Tactus, Artalinna, and Piano Classics labels. Among his releases for 2023 are albums of Scarlatti sonatas, Scriabin

mazurkas, Schumann Kinderszenen, trios by Debussy and Tchaikovsky, Beethoven Symphony No. 9 for four hands, and Haydn sonatas. Please follow him on Facebook for news about projects and plans for 2024.

On YouTube his recording of the complete Chopin Waltzes has received more than 1,000,000 streams to date.

Alessandro Deljavan graduated from the Conservatorio Statale di Musica

Giuseppe Verdi, in Milan, and the Istituto Gaetano Braga, in Teramo.

From 2005–13 he was among the select young artists attending the International Piano Academy at Lake Como, Italy, under the tutelage of the Academy’s artistic director, William Grant Naboré. He has also participated in courses at the Mozarteum Salzburg, the Festival dell Nazioni at Città di Castello, and the Ottorino Respighi Foundation on St. George Island, Venice, Italy.

His teachers include Valentina Chiola, Piotr Lachert, Riccardo Risaliti, Enrico

Belli, Eugenio Bagnoli, Lazar Berman, William Grant Naboré, Dimitri Bashkirov, Laurent Boullet, Fou Ts’ong, Dominique Merlet, John Perry, Menahem Pressler, Claude Frank, Richard Goode, and Andreas Staier.

He is currently artistic director of the Opera Master school in Crecchio and professor of piano at the University of Giordano Conservatory of Music, in Rodi Garganico, Italy.

Alessandro Deljavan, piano

Recorded in the Olivier Music Barn in December of 2017, produced by Monte Nickles with associate producer Kathy Geisler, and released by Aeras Music Group.

1. Franz Liszt: Valse-Impromptu, S. 213

2. Franz Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S. 514

3. Franz Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 2, S. 515

4. Franz Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 3, S. 216

5. Franz Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 4, S. 216

6. Franz Liszt: Sonata in B Minor, S. 178

Technical Specifications

Piano: Véra

SS#: 598992 D

Piano technician: Mike Toia

Performance Sound Recording, Sound Mixing & Mastering: Monte Nickles

Production Assistant: Devanney Haruta

Recorded in AURO-3D® for immersive playback in 32-bit 384kHz DXD format

Microphones:

Main array: Left, Right, Center: DPA 4006

Surround L & R: DPA 4041

Height Front L & R DPA 4006 w/40mm APE

Height Rear L & R: Schoeps MK2H w/30mm APE

Microphone preamps: Grace Design M802

A/D Conversion: Merging Technology HAPI

and HORUS with Premium converter cards

DAW: Merging Technologies Pyramix

Alessandro Deljavan portrait photos page 2 and 12, by Jean-Baptiste Millot

How to play a track

Click on the arrow on your chosen track and listen. Many computers after 2016 can play high-quality sound.

If no sound

Your computer may not be able to read the chosen track. You can upgrade your sound by adding a converter and headphones (see the lists under FAQs).

Here’s how to attach them to your computer:

To add a converter and headphones

1. Plug the items in: Computer + USB cable + converter + headphones.

2. Double-click on the TRACK you’d like to hear.

3. Go have lunch while it downloads. It could take five minutes to half an hour, depending on your internet speed.

4. You’ll see the ICON for the track in your downloads window. You can play it from there.

5. If it feels more convenient, drag it to your desktop.

6. Double-click the ICON. You might see a PLAYBACK WINDOW with controls to pause, stop, and play.

7. Figure out how to turn the sound up and down on your computer.

8. Put the SOUND down LOW.

9. Put on the headphones.

10. Push PLAY in the PLAYBACK WINDOW.

11. Turn up the sound until you hear the music comfortably, on both the converter and your computer.

(Note that you may have to turn up your computer’s sound in its PREFERENCES window in its SETTINGS.)

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Alessandro Deljavan at Tippet Rise