As arranged by Liszt for piano and orchestra, Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy was conspicuous by its absence from the CD catalogue. So Bolet's recording with Solti and the LPO is welcome. I was a little disappointed with the actual sound: the orchestra lacks its true warmth, and there's a touch of clanginess in the piano tone above a certain dynamic level. But the performance is splendid. The contrasts of the opening Allegro con fuoco are savoured without sacrifice of its underlying resolution. I also enjoyed the natural melodic flow of the Adagio (not taken too slowly), the light-footed spring of the scherzo and the lilt of its trio, and last but not least Bolet's fanciful response to the glints and gleams with which Liszt enlivens Schubert's somewhat patterned figuration in the course of the finale.
The remaining 52 minutes are drawn from the finely recorded Liszt cycle preoccupying Bolet for the last ten or so years. This is supremely aristocratic Liszt playing, marked by ''immense reserves of power rather than ostentatious physical or emotional display.... a quiet but unmistakable authority that takes one straight to the heart of the matter'' as Bryce Morrison so perceptively put it in the December Gramophone. You might perhaps feel that the Tarantella needs a touch more flamboyance, and even the Sonetto 104 del Petrarca a more overt suggestion of underlying disquiet. But with his glowing cantabile and shapely line, Bolet constantly reminds us of the vocal source of these and other pieces included. In the liquid trickles of ''Au bord d'une source'' ''Les jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este'' and even the two Schubert song transcriptions, Bolet also made me feel that no composer ever drew more ravishingly seductive sonority from the keyboard than Liszt. In short you could wait a long time before having the image of Liszt as meretricious showman more convincingly destroyed.'