Nowhere does Vanguard Classics indicate that the Liszt performances gathered for this reissue respectively date from the early 1970s (Russell Sherman’s Transcendental Etudes, which first appeared on an Advent cassette in 1974, reissued by Vanguard as a two-LP set in 1977) and from 1968 (Earl Wild’s “The Demonic Liszt” recital). Russell Sherman has played the Liszt etudes splendidly in concert, where even his stop-start motivic manipulations and penchant for foisting secondary material under the interpretive microscope never detracted from a genuine sense of Liszt’s sweeping rhetoric and drama. On disc, however, you get all the eccentricities and virtually none of the long line, compounded by tempos that are generally too slow for the music to take wing. There’s no forward impetus, for instance, to Wilde Jagd’s declamatory dotted chords; the A minor Molto vivace’s swirling right-hand lines are restrained to a fault; Feux Follet’s gossamer double notes fizz like flat soda left out in the sun; and the F minor etude’s “agitato” is translated to fits and starts. In lyrical pieces like Paysage, Ricordanza, and Harmonies du Soir, Sherman gets out of his own way, opens up his sonority, and lets the music flow simply and directly, with plenty of room for colorful cantabiles and atmospheric voicings. I hope one day Vanguard will reissue Sherman’s superb performances of the Liszt Dante Sonata and Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este that appeared on the aforementioned LP set.
No controversy surrounds Earl Wild’s 1968 recital devoted to works pairing Liszt and the Devil (some say they were one and the same!). Listen to the bravura, panache, and rhythmic life he brings to the difficult Robert le Diable transcription, or notice the controlled sense of abandon that informs Gnomenreignen and the Mephisto Polka. The Faust Waltz soars and scintillates, and Wild’s intelligently paced Don Juan Fantasy gives greater voice to the music’s operatic context than many a younger speed demon. Only in Mephisto Waltz’s middle-section leaps do I detect an air of caution (in contrast to Ashkenazy’s pulverizing fearlessness), but then again, Wild makes no bones about providing his own imaginative cadenza for the ending. Don’t miss “The Demonic Liszt”, even if it means carting Sherman’s Lisztian baggage.
