Liszt and Wagner: Sonatas and Metamorphoses. Thomas Hitzlberger. Ambronay AMY008.
During his career Franz Liszt must have played hundreds of pianos, but the Bayreuth-built 1873 Steingraeber that Thomas Hitzlberger uses here is special. It's apparently the same instrument that Liszt played for his daughter and son-in-law, Cosima and Richard Wagner. A nice selling point, but what matters is how it sounds now, and how it responds to the pressure of a work like Liszt's B minor Piano Sonata. Happily, it rejoices in a beautiful, satiny timbre, and takes everything that Hiztlberger, in his carefully shaped but appositely passionate performance, can throw at it. His ingenious programme also includes fine readings of Wagner's own slightly rambling Piano Sonata of the same year (1853), two pieces Liszt wrote in memory of Wagner (R.W.-Venezia and Am Grabe Richard Wagners) and both versions of the austere, harmonically adventurous La lugubre gondola, the first written as a premonition of Wagner's death, as well as a towering performance of Lizst's formidable transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
Stephen Pettitt © 2007
