Jean-Efflam Bavouzet - Liszt: Piano Music '2005

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Invocation
02. Hymne a la nuit
03. Lullaby - Chant du berceau
04. Schlaflos! Frage und Antwort
05. Grosses Konzertsolo
06. Bagatelle (Mefisto Valse No. 4)
07. La Notte
08. Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch
09. Hymne du matin
10. Tristan und Isolde: Vorspiel
11. Isoldens Liebestod (Arr. for Piano)
12. En rêve: Nocturne

Hats off! A genius Liszt player! Not only does Jean-Efflam Bavouzet possess a
perfect technique, but he also commands the huge, varied sonority and narrative
power needed to make Liszt’s complex idiom come brilliantly alive. All
the great dead Liszt players knew how to balance tremolos, arpeggios, and
similar background devices against melodic components so that the textures would
sing out with variety and color, emerge in proper perspective, and never, ever
bog down. They also knew to serve Liszt’s “stagy” lyrical
inspirations wholeheartedly and generously. Bavouzet knows these secrets, and
has totally internalized them. That’s why the Invocation’s bass
rumbles and rattling tremolos sound uplifting rather than bombastic (the same
goes for the ending of the gorgeously paced Wagner/Liszt Liebestod), or why En
réve’s lyric simplicity sounds contained and dignified rather than
mawkish.

The Grosses Konzertsolo, a prototype for Liszt’s two-piano Concerto
Pathétique, receives a blazing, utterly inspired reading where fire and
poetry lock horns and never let up. It puts all other recorded performances of
this piece in the shade (not that there’ve been that many, I admit).
Similarly, the rarely heard La Notte boasts such high levels of pianistic finish
and stylish elegance that you’ll never need to hear the piece in its
orchestral version again–that is, if you’ve heard it, ever! As for
being an orchestra, and a sexy one at that, look no further than
Bavouzet’s remarkable playing of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und
Isolde in Zoltan Kocsis’ transcription.

Conversely, the bleak, anti-virtuosic sound world of late Liszt also sparks
Bavouzet’s imagination. For example, he judges the odd chromatic twists
and turns of Schlaflos in a more fluid fashion than Paul Lewis’ fine
recording on Harmonia Mundi. Although the excellent annotations do not mention
the instrument, the sound of the piano itself leads me to suspect that Bavouzet
employs the same vintage 1901 Steinway he used in his MDG Ravel cycle. It
relates to a modern American Steinway much as a hand-carved oakwood table does
to a factory-made Formica copy. The harp-like, disembodied quality of soft,
rippling passages suggests the “piano without hammers” of
Debussy’s ideal. No doubt Liszt would have liked it too, and possibly
would have enjoyed Bavouzet’s meaningful, committed and loving
interpretations even more. A very special disc, not to be missed.

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