Alexander Siloti (1863-1945): Liszt - Bénédiction de Dieu

Alexander Siloti was an extremely fine pianist. He was taught first by Scriabin’s piani teacher, Nikolai Zverev, followed by Rubinstein, Taneyev and Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatoire. He moved on to become one of Liszt’s pupils from 1883. He moved towards conducting in preference to playing the piano, an early success being the world premiere of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto in 1902. Had he made any proper recordings we would no doubt rate his importance as much higher. As one of the foremost musicians in Russia, he actively pursued the introduction of many new composers’ music both as a pianist and conductor, and was the recipient of many dedications. He also produced a large amount of piano transcription and other works. He left a handfull of piano rolls, but the only surviving acoustic recordings of his playing are some privately-made recordings by his family. Around 25 minutes’ worth of music is guessed to have been made. Unfortunately most of this is either known to be destroyed, currently unknown of location or otherwise unavailable. His piano rolls, when played back well, display a superb pianist of extreme sensitivity. This recording is a piano roll he made for the Duo-Art system, of Liszt’s work “Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude“ (roll number 6636 in the Duo-Art catalogue) - number three from the 1847 set of “Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses“. The performance shows almost all of the same qualities as the fragmentary bits of live playing recorded. Some technical info: this roll was played back not on a real piano, but is a digitised playback on a sampled Steinway piano made from a digitally encoded transcription of the original roll (all the dynamics, articulation, pedalling, and so on is unchanged from the original roll, and there has been no “editing“ of it). This is something I am experimenting with doing at the moment and I am quite pleased with this result, which is so close to the effect of a real piano that I hope listeners can enjoy it as if it were real. And I do hope that those who normally avoid piano rolls give this one a listen, as it is astoundingly beautiful playing.