COMPOSERS: Liszt
LABELS: NAIVE
PERFORMER: Boris Berezovsky
CATALOGUE NO: DR 2104
Film-maker Andy Sommer brings a wide array of lighting and restless cross-cutting effects to Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Études, mirroring pianist Boris Berezovsky’s similarly flighty, fidgety, distracting interpretations. What tempo does he really want for Nos 1 and 10? No. 2 is pounded out to the point where you can barely ascertain the pitches.
The pianist blurs Mazeppa’s inner double notes, and fusses and frets over Eroica and Wilde Jagd, as if Liszt doesn’t give you enough to do. No wonder Berezovsky’s perspiring! françois-frédéric guy’s Liszt recital, by contrast, is about virtuosity serving the composer, rather than the other way around, and Yvon Gérault’s visual counterpart allows you to observe the pianist’s physical economy and concentration in long stretches.
Call the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude and the Pensées des morts ‘box office poison’, but Guy’s ravishing nuances and varied textures are rivetting. And his Liszt Sonata truly sings and breathes as the musical ideas flow in and out of each other in long, inevitable arcs. It’s also good that internal chapter points demarcate these long, continuous works.