COMPOSERS: Liszt
LABELS: Erato Collection
WORKS: Piano Concerto No. 1; Piano Concerto No. 2; Hungarian Fantasy
PERFORMER: François-René Duchable (piano) LPO/James Conlon
CATALOGUE NO: 0630-12811-2 1984
Erato’s Collection series is well-packaged, with model English notes from Alain Cochard. Not all its reissues are top drawer, however. Fantasy apart, Duchable’s disappointing, occasionally pedestrian Liszt is spiritually remote, wanting in that formal continuity, physical weight and epic dimension characteristic of the great Lisztian stylists.
A shallow, forced piano sound, lacking harmonic resonance, doesn’t help. Conlon (with the LPO below their Philips best under Haitink for Brendel) provides a merely dutiful accompaniment, unimaginatively recorded. Ates Orga