During his European concert tours of the 1830s and ’40s, much of Liszt’s creativity went into réminiscences, paraphrases and fantasies. The majority had a short shelf life. Undeservedly. Athletic showmanship notwithstanding, not all were tinsel galleries. Many explored the burgeoning Romantic piano, challenging and consolidating the mechanical and sonic possibilities of the instrument. A number dwelt, discussed and developed. (The two longest examples on this new album from Martin Cousin take 26 and 20 minutes respectively.) Granted, not all have the staying power or persona of Liszt’s Norma or Don Juan, seams can be insufficiently disguised and clichés risk becoming repetitive tools of transition or a means out of awkward corners. But they’re fascinating even so, more than once asserting a freewheeling firebrand on the up, a man intent from the start on bringing the opera house, not just tunes, to the concert stage, drama and dreams, characters and characterisation, the imposing and the intimate apace.

Cousin makes a fair case for the 1836 first version of the Réminiscences des Huguenots, Liszt’s ‘grande fantaisie dramatique’ after Meyerbeer notable for its variation and elaboration as well as its movement-like construction. Here and there his timing, pauses and under-scored rests passingly over-sectionalise proceedings at the expense of breathing and momentum. No matter. He may not have the bite or blaze of Arnaldo Cohen – whose reading of the 1842 revision, with its different ‘Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott’ ending, launched Naxos’s Liszt Edition back in 1997 – but he’s a strong lyricist, has an ear for sonority and can vocalise an aria.

If only because of its melodies and casting, the largely forgotten Réminiscences de La Scala (‘Fantasia on Italian Operatic Melodies and Mercadante’s Il giuramento’, 1838‑39), uneasy secco colorations aside, impacts more – without ousting Andreas Pistorius’s 1985 Dresden account (Eterna/Capriccio). Cousin’s deliberated tempos essentially promote revaluation and clarification. In the 1836 Rondeau fantastique sur un thème espagnol ‘El contrabandista’ – up to six minutes slower than the competition – they backfire. Molto animato quasi presto Liszt wants, further adding metronome marks oscillating between 120 and 104 per dotted-crotchet bar. Cousin’s choice of dotted crotchet=c84 for the refrain, a practice lap effectively, doesn’t convince. Flat-lining the 1804 García song that’s the basis of the piece exacts a price. The Festspiel und Brautlied aus Wagner’s Lohengrin (the lengthier 1854 first version) fares better. The closing track, a late-period fragment from a proposed fantasy on the ‘Ballade de la Mandragore’ from Delibes’s Jean de Nivelle, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1880, will be of rarity interest.

Liszt

‘Complete Piano Music, Vol 61 – Transcriptions from Operas’

El contrabandista de M García, S252. Festspiel und Brautlied aus Wagner’s Lohengrin S446/1. La Mandragore, S698. Réminiscences de La Scala, S458. Réminiscences des Huguenots, S412

Martin Cousin pf

Naxos 8 574545

This review originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today