Jiří Hlinka | F. Liszt: Sonata in B minor, S. 178

Описание: The B minor Sonata is among the very few recordings Jiří Hlinka made before a hand injury ended his performing career. According to the pianist himself, this performance was originally produced for Czechoslovak Radio, but later suppressed for political reasons and eventually released in Norway by Vest-Norsk Plateselskap. The interpretation shows Hlinka at his most uncompromising: a wild, masculine, take-no-prisoners reading with remarkable architectural control, command, and no sentimentality whatsoever. The recording itself runs at a noticeably higher pitch, which is not a result of the digital transfer, but already present on the original LP.
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Jiří Hlinka (born 1944 in Prague, grew up in Plzeň) studied at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts with Zdeněk Jílek, František Rauch and Josef Páleníček, and on a few occasions also had the opportunity to play for Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter. In 1966 he reached the finals of the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, as the only one of five Czech participants. His repertoire embraced the great Romantic concertos (Tchaikovsky No. 1, Chopin No. 1, both Liszt concertos, Khachaturian), Czech music, and in solo works he focused above all on Liszt and Prokofiev – his 1967 recording of Prokofiev’s Sonatas No. 2 and No. 6 was in fact the first stereo recording ever made of those works.

After his concert career was curtailed in 1969, he turned to pedagogy: first in Prague, then from 1972 in Bergen and later also in Oslo. Although he left Czechoslovakia legally through Pragokoncert, the communist regime considered it unacceptable when he obtained Norwegian citizenship in 1982, and from that moment they labelled him an emigrant. In Norway he became one of the country’s most influential teachers. Among his most successful pupils are Leif Ove Andsnes, Christian Ihle Hadland, Håvard Gimse and Geir Botnen. He has also given masterclasses across Scandinavia, in the Czech Republic, as well as in Chicago and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2004 he was awarded Norway’s highest cultural distinction, the King’s Medal of Merit, and in 2007 received the Gratias Agit award from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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Recording credits
Label: Vest-Norsk Plateselskap – VNP 0085-7
Recorded: 1967
Released: 1985
LP cover art: Leif Nordahl
Producer: Torbjørn Wilhelmsen
Source: from the private collection of Zdeněk Páleníček
Used with the permission of Jiří Hlinka
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