Society News

** OUP Discount for Liszt Society Members **

Oxford University Press is offering members of the Society a 20% discount on its range of Academic Music titles.

Details on the OUP website at http://www.oup.com/uk/sale/websocls

Bernhard Stavenhagen 1862-1914

Pianist, conductor and last pupil of Franz Liszt

A recital of his piano pieces and songs performed by Elgin Strub-Ronayne, Monika Dehler and Ernest Hutcheson and works by Liszt played by Stavenhagen on piano rolls has been re-released on CD by Symposium Records.

Franz Liszt took Bernhard Stavenhagen with him as companion and secretary on his last international tour in the Spring of 1886. In April they arrived in London where Stavenhagen made his debut, playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto no 1 in Eb at the Crystal Palace.

Three months later, on 31st July, Liszt died and Stavenhagen devoted the rest of his life to promoting Liszt’s music, as well as that of other contemporary composers. He had little time to compose and many of his works are lost or long out of print. The pieces presented on this CD were tracked down in archives by his great-niece Elgin Strub-Ronayne who made the first recordings in Weimar in 1987. The disc includes historic recordings of Stavenhagen himself performing the two Légendes and three other Liszt works on piano rolls recorded in 1905. Several of these rolls are inscribed ‘Nach persönlicher Erinnerung an Liszt’ (according to personal memory of Liszt).

The CD is available at £10+£1.05 p&p (UK) by writing to the Society's chairperson Elgin Ronayne at  44 Vineyard Hill Road, LONDON SW19 7JH.