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10/20/2026
“Metanoia”
Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor, S. 178 – La lugubre gondola II, S. 200/2 – Bagatelle sans tonalité, S. 216a – Nuages gris, S. 199 – Csárdás macabre, S. 224 – Richard Wagner – Venezia, S. 201 – Hungarian Rhapsody n° 17, S. 244/17 – Unstern! – Sinistre, S. 208 – 2 Légendes, S. 175: n° 2 “St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots”
Yulianna Avdeeva (piano)
Recording: Tippet Rise Art Center, Fishtail, Montana (February 2024) – 68’ 39
Pentatone PTC5187655 – Booklet in English
 
The pianist and composer Franz Liszt was, for many years, a flamboyant presence in European society. His love affairs were notorious, his compositions devilishly hard to play, his technique incomparable. Listeners speculated how he came by his prodigious gifts. Was the Prince of Darkness the secret to his success?
Perhaps Liszt wondered as well. What most listeners did not know is that Liszt had an affinity for the sacred as well as the profane. It was only his father’s strong opposition that kept him from entering the priesthood. In the clash between the two pathways—often captured in music filled with struggle and discord—it was ultimately the spiritual that triumphed. Later in life, weighed down by personal tragedy, the composer abandoned his performance-based career and entered minor orders within the Catholic church. This limited form of priesthood allowed him to travel and to compose, but he could not celebrate the Mass or hear Confession. He continued to teach and to write music with a directly religious or nuanced spiritual cast. There is a theological term for this kind of personal transformation, and it is the title of Yulianna Avdeeva’s new album of Liszt’s solo piano music: “Metanoia”.
Metanoia is Greek for changing one’s mind in a dramatic, life‑altering way. When John the Baptist addresses the crowd at the River Jordan, he cries out “Metanoeite,” which some, not quite correctly, translate today as “Repent!” It is not a call to sackcloth and ashes, but rather to see the world from an entirely new point of view.
Avdeeva has done two very interesting things with this album. She has gathered a collection of short works from Liszt’s late period, the wellspring of “Metanoia”, and she has also included a major composition from his early works, the Piano Sonata in B minor. This Sonata provides the listener with an aural panorama of a spiritual pilgrimage, from primitive intimations of awakening to a total immersion in an enlightened state. The combination of both types of music reveals a Metanoia earlier in Liszt’s spiritual life than is usually imagined.
Avdeeva offers a holistic vision of Liszt’s inner journey, opening in dark, solitary tones in G, played low on the keyboard, with frequent inhalations and exhalations of emotion, not unlike those found in hatha yoga. This is one of the most striking performances of this Sonata that I have heard, as the artist alternates delicate traceries of sound with powerful motives of ascent and accelerandi. The sonata explores four movements joined as one in an uninterrupted sequence. (The many revealed as One is a common trope in mystical literature). While I had not thought previously of this beautiful work as a metaphor for the spiritual journey and the conflicts leading up to it, Avdeeva opened my eyes to this interpretation through her profound insight and impeccable technique.
The eight brief selections that follow are more commonly associated with Liszt’s inner life and journey outside the world of celebrity and showmanship. I was surprised at first to see the inclusion of the Hungarian Rhapsody n° 17, but this is, in fact, a rhapsody imbued with a sense of the reflective, even the divine, not a showcase for virtuosos. Avdeeva brings out the ecclesiastical modal qualities of this rhapsody with a deeper and more mysterious watermark.
The theme of Légendes (n° 2) which concludes this recital includes a reference to the melody of a carol by Gounod (you may recognize it from the boy choir scene in the film, The Bishop’s Wife.) Avdeeva plays this last miniature with power and conviction. I only wish this album had had room to include one of my favorite short pieces from the (Années de pélerinage), i.e. “Les Jeux d’eaux ŕ la Villa d’Este” (“The Waters of the Villa d’Este”). And what about the Petrarch Sonnets? So much Liszt, so little time!
This album makes us crave more from this important young artist.
Linda Holt
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