‘As much a prayer as it is music, embodying a timeless message of compassion and transcendence’: Leif Ove Andsnes likens Liszt’s Via Crucis (1878‑79) to ‘an encounter with Liszt’s soul – a man grappling with the mysteries of faith, redemption and human suffering’. Published posthumously (in 1936), the work sets the 14 Stations of the Cross for soloists, choir and obbligato keyboard (optionally organ, harmonium or piano), principally in Latin but also transiently German (Lutheran chorales underlie Stations VI and XII). It’s a late work of stripped-away textures, desolate vocal lines and plainchant contours (the sixth-century ‘Crux fidelis’ motif familiar from previous religious works as well as Un sospiro and the B minor Sonata), the canvas veined by other-worldly chromatics and tonally disquieting augmented harmonies. Brisker than many at around 35 minutes, Andsnes is precise and responsive, and the modulated, dynamically terraced voices of The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir under Grete Pedersen encourage the music to flow pliably yet without jeopardising intimacy or reverential pacing. The luminous acoustic of Oslo’s pre-war Ris Kirke heightens the experience.

The church’s 1917 Steinway, a characterful D model of vintage bass end and campanarian treble, comes into its own in Andsnes’s artfully balanced solos. In involvingly pensée poétique mood, economy before excess, the Consolations (the 1850 second version) witness confiding cantabile confession, the D flat third number a lingering twilight masterclass in tone, phrasing and scarcely touched cadence. Two devotionally dispatched tableaux from the 1852‑53 revised version of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses after Lamartine (‘Miserere, d’après Palestrina’; ‘Andante lagrimoso’ – the longer, semitone-lower 1847 original is called ‘La lampe du temple’) compromise neither the ‘ecstasy, reverence and Romantic intensity’ of the former nor the ‘fragility of the human spirit’ of the latter. Top-quality production/engineering values (John Fraser, Arne Akselberg).

This review originally appeared in the SUMMER 2025 issue of International Piano – Subscribe Today