APR has been devoting much effort on behalf of the late pianist Sergio Fiorentino’s recorded legacy, from live concerts taped in his final years to rare studio bounty, like this Liszt recital. With two exceptions, the master tapes for these recordings are lost, but producer Bryan Crimp had access to a reasonably clean copy of the original Concert Artists LP. Happily, Fiorentino’s easy command of Liszt’s many, many notes is matched by his ability to convey the composer’s overt theatricality with poise and panache. As a result, the Hungarian Rhapsodies come across as being more three-dimensional pieces than the virtuoso fluff for which they are wrongly dismissed. Ideally, we might want sharper contrasts and a more demonic undercurrent throughout the Octave Etude (No. 2 from Liszt Paganini Etudes) and Gnomenreignen. And the Grand Galop Chromatique’s giddy exhibitionism reaches more demented heights via Georges Cziffra’s interpretation. For these sessions, Fiorentino dusted off a Liszt rarity: the Grande Fantasie de bravoure sur la Clochette de Paganini. Imagine “La Campabella” with an extended introduction, and four times as much music that is 40 times more difficult to play, and you’ll get the picture. Fiorentino dives into this overwrought concocotion as if it were the greatest piano piece ever written, and wipes the floor with Leslie Howard’s dog-sober version on Hyperion. Less specialized buyers might be turned off by overall shallow sound plus piano notes that resonate with residual fuzz.
