Release eighteen, disc twenty. Giuseppe Albanese playing an assortment of Liszt pieces. Though Albanese's DG debut wasn't the highlight of my first batch of Italian discs, I decided I should try his Liszt. I am glad I did. Albanese sounds more at home here, and he offers more variety in his playing.
Au bord d'une source and Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este (misspelled on the back cover) open the disc and find Mr Albanese playing with more subtlety, color, and dynamic shading on the quiet end of the spectrum. There are hints of more dazzling playing, and then in the Second Legend, one gets to hear some larger scale playing. The Dante sonata follows, and it combines everything in one extremely well done rendition of the piece. It doesn't swell and undulate with the very best of them (Julian Gorus, say, or various Piano Titans of old), and as recorded, it doesn't achieve the same sense of scale as displayed on his first disc, but it is superb.
Then comes the Rhapsodie Espagnole. Albanese crushes it. Here is potentially garish Liszt, played in unabashedly virtuosic style, that nonetheless sounds fantastic and engaging. This is generally the type of Liszt piece I don't listen to, but Albanese makes the most of it. This is followed up by a beautiful, gentle, contemplative Danse des Sylphes transcription. Liszt's transcription of Isolde's Liebestod follows, and Albanese delivers a very fine reading, mostly tender and lovely, and possessed of some convulsing, repeated chords as the piece progresses, and a delicate ending. This more or less matches up to Zoltan Kocsis' reading to my ears. The disc ends with the Reminiscences de Norma. Here's I piece I've only heard a few times, and then the only recording I recall having heard is Jorge Bolet's late career recording. This one is rather more vibrant and varied in tone, dynamics, and is quite digitally dazzling. I can't say it matches the best works on this disc, but it is excellent in every way.
This disc is much more to my liking than Albanese's first disc. It's one heckuva Liszt recital. It makes me want to here him in more Liszt. An interview he did for an Italian language outlet (go figure) indicates that he has always had an affinity for the Hungarian. It shows.
Sound is generally superb, but it sounds a bit processed, with manipulated sounding reverb and hints of compression.
