Some years back Giovanni Bellucci launched a cycle in which Beethoven’s piano sonatas would be paired with the composer’s nine symphonies in Liszt’s solo piano transcriptions. Three CDs appeared on Warner Classics before the project fizzled out. More recently, Brilliant Classics brought out two multi-disc Beethoven sonata volumes with Bellucci, and now a five-disc set with all nine Beethoven/Liszt symphonies.
While Bellucci’s protean energy impresses, his propensity for lurching rhythms, twitchy phrasings, exaggerated articulations, and fussy details invariably detract from the proverbial big picture. If you think the speed-ups and slow downs in the First symphony’s Finale throw the music’s momentum out of whack, you haven’t reckoned with the Eroica’s seasickness-inducing Scherzo; just compare it alongside Paul Wee’s infinitely steadier rendition and you’ll shake your head in disbelief. Nor do Bellucci’s powerful dynamic surges in the Eroica’s first two movements justify his tempo mauling.
While his runs and double notes in No. 4’s last movement do not match Cyprien Katsaris and Konstantin Scherbakov for evenness and control, he nails those impossible repeated notes in No. 8’s Finale magnificently. Then there’s Bellucci’s altogether strange Ninth.
He labors over the first movement, yet plays the Scherzo relatively normally, save for contrived voicings in the Trio. I found his protracted and rhetorical slow movement oddly compelling in its quasi-Furtwänglerian stasis. An underpowered choir and wobbly soloists join in for the Ode to Joy Finale. Personally I prefer the Beethoven/Liszt Ninth without singers, and continue to recommend Katsaris’ blazing premiere recording as the reference version. No. 5’s first movement and No. 7’s Finale prove that Bellucci can navigate Liszt’s challenges in a direct and forthright manner. If only he had consistently chosen to do so throughout this bafflingly uneven cycle.
