Divine Art presents an album of well-loved piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt of songs and arias by Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Franz Schubert and Charles Gounod, from Lithuanian pianist Indrė Petrauskaitė. These dazzling showpieces for the piano provide fascinating insight into how one composer effectively interprets the work of another.

Pianist Indrė Petrauskaitė’s first music history lesson in Lithuania at the age of seven was about genre and song, during which she heard a recording of Schubert’s ‘Der Müller und der Bach’, featured in Liszt’s transcription on this release, and it was the inspiration behind the programming on the album, recorded in 2007. It was only then that her still newly independent home country of Lithuania had begun acquiring concert grand pianos for their fine concert halls, such as the new Steinway in Klaipėda’s Concert Hall where this recording took place.

The album opens with Liszt’s transcriptions of two passionate and romantic works: Schumann’s ‘Widmung’ from the song cycle Myrthen and ‘Isoldes Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, followed by the charming and magical ‘Spinnerlied’ from Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer. Several transcriptions of Schubert’s lied are featured here: the sombre ‘Der Doppelgänger’ from Schwanengesang and ‘Der Müller und der Bach’ (the inspiration for the album) from Die schöne Müllerin; the soothing ‘Frühlingsglaube’ and the delightful and imaginative ‘Ständchen von Shakespeare’ (Horch, hoch! Die Lerch!); finally a piece (no.6) from Liszt’s own Soirées de Vienne cycle - arrangements of Schubert’s tremendous 12 Valses nobles, D969. The album has a ‘coda’: the ‘Valse’ from Gounod’s opera Faust, the subject of several works by Liszt. This famous virtuoso piano transcription is full of drama and excitement, with ‘diabolic’ sections but also gentle and lyrical, at times even transcendant.

Indrė Petrauskaitė says ‘It is delightful to take the example from Liszt himself and continue to ‘practise’ the love for the original music while ‘revisiting’ these famous transcriptions’.

After graduate and postgraduate studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music, Indrė entered the Royal Academy of Music where she has completed her Masters degree. She has performed with several orchestras in Lithuania and elsewhere in Europe and given many solo and chamber music recitals. She is now based in London, combining teaching and performing.