Choir director Tamás Bubnó said Mária Eckhardt, who heads Budapest's Liszt Memorial Museum and Research Centre, had recommended that a series of recording featuring little known works by Liszt be prepared for the bicentennial of the composer's birth in 2011.
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Liszt wrote about fifty works for men's chorus, but just one-third have been recorded. The reason, according to Bubnó, is that the works are "terribly difficult", showing Liszt thought in terms of instruments, with little regard for the limits of the human voice.
The Saint Ephrem Men's Chorus is trying to fill the gap and will launch the first CD in the series, published by Budapest Music Center, in a month. The chorus will record at least another six CDs, and perhaps as many as eight, he added.
The first CD starts with Goethe's last words, Licht, mehr Licht, from 1849, and ends with the German writer's Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh. Twelve more numbers are in between.
The Saint Ephrem Men's Chorus recently returned from France, where they performed at the Auvers sur Oise International Arts Festival. The Hungarian pianist and director Zoltán Kocsis taught a master course and gave a concert of Schubert at the festival.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
