Stanislav Neuhaus plays Liszt Aux cypres de la Villa d'Este - live 1963

Stanislav Neuhaus (21.03.27--24.01.80) passed away 36 years ago today. In my opinion he is both the most neglected and most misunderstood of all the Russian pianists. These days he is represented through a small number of metallic-sounding recordings with the piano far too forward, which makes listening to him an uncomfortable experience and wholly fails to represent his playing or the sound he created through it. Therefore to celebrate a very special pianist, I will upload one of his lesser-known live recordings each day for the next month. I'll mostly go in chronological order, with a few exceptions. I hope that this in some manner helps to reevaluate a pianist who I think is not adequately appreciated--at least not outside of Russia--and who deserves a unique place in piano history for his impulsive and intense playing, which is poetic in a white-hot kind of way that is rarely ever heard. This is a live recording from 2 September 1963, of Stanislav Neuhaus playing Liszt's Aux cyprès de la Villa d'Este no. 1, from the third year of the Years of Pilgrimage. A short bio -- he was the son of Heinrich Neuhaus, and the stepson of Boris Pasternak, with whom he grew up and in whose house he continued to live throughout his life (in Peredelkino). Before officially studying with his father around 1948/9, he was a student of Vladimir Belov, a great pianist and teacher who had studied with Blumenfeld and Savyolova. I found it interesting that through Stanislav's teachers, his so-called pedagogical lines effectively trace back to Beethoven, Blumenfeld, Szymanowski, Rimsky-Korsakov, Anton Rubinstein, Moscheles, Hiller, Hummel, Field and Clementi. That may be the richest list of 'ancestors' of any pianist. In any case, after graduating in 1950, he toured the Soviet Union with his father, playing two piano works, one of which I will upload in a few days. With Naumov and Malinin, he became an assistant to his father, and eventually taught his own class at the Moscow Conservatory. I've featured some of his students in the last few days. They include Radu Lupu, Vladimir Krainev, Brigitte Engerer, Rusudan Khuntsaria, Elena Richter, Valery Kastelsky, Evgeny Levitan, Andrei Nikolsky, and many more. Stanislav's son is Stanislav Bunin, winner of the 1985 Chopin Competition. His grandson is Adi Neuhaus. Станислав Нейгауз - Лист - Aux cyprès de la Villa d'Este no. 1 - Années de pèlerinage - Troisième année - Threnodie - Threnody