This is one of the more exciting CD's of more "standard" repertoire in the Naxos catalog. The playing is of a very high quality and the recording is of demonstration standard! Only "Les Preludes" is well-known to the general music aficianado so I hope that people can get to know the less well-known Liszt symphonic poems through this inexpensive recording. One of Halasz' best recordings!

All four of these symphonic poems are performed here in outstanding fashion. Crisp, lively playing of symphonic masterpieces! Just the right balance is struck throughout, with the quiet passages played gently & beautifully and when the music explodes this is classical thunder at it's best :-)

I'd ignore GD from Norway's review...in my opinion, he either wasn't in the right mood when he listened to this CD or Franz Liszt just isn't his cup of tea...it's absurd to me to hear anyone call these great works "banal" or "tiresome" etc...

I just don't see how these performances could be measurably improved upon and highly recommend giving this disc a spin!!!

Enjoy & happy listening :-)

This CD is fantastic.

First, the music is great. Les Preludes is especially good music. Also, they are all short works (about 15-20 minutes each) . . . which is important for a busy guy like me. I don't have 1 1/2 hours to listen to one Mahler symphony. Recording quality - high. Finally, look at that price - like $6.00 for some 70 minutes of music!

Halasz and the Katowice give us a selection of the most famous symphonic poems, with mixed success. Yes, Mazeppa is, in all its banality, full of coarse-grained power, but then it also receives the most successful performance on the disc. In general, Halasz fails to let the music sing, and the other works (Mazeppa as well, but that one can take it) sounds rather choppy, crude and unpoetical. There is indeed a lot of relentless energy here, but to convince, Liszt needs more than that. Les preludes, for instance, sounds more banal here than it needs to, even tiresome, in fact. The Polish players aren't exactly polished either (sorry for the bad pun), and the sound quality is rather ordinary. The disc is by no means a complete failure, but these works are really so much better played elsewhere.