Disturbing revaluations of several famous artists of the past have recently been forced upon us by a spate of reissues of archival material. Valuable as such documentation is, one cannot suppress a sigh of regret when reverence for great names is undermined by recordings that show them as all too fallible. So one approaches Frederic Lamond one of Liszt's last pupils, who had previously worked with von Bulow, and who retained his British nationality (and Glaswegian accent) to the end despite living most of his life in Germany with some anxiety, especially when Bryan Crimp innocently suggests in his presentation that Lamond ''did not take recording too seriously at first''.
The large number of palpable mis-hits in the recordings up to 1927 bears this out only too audibly, and except in one regard—his outstanding command of subtle tone-values, evident in all he does here—an 'innocent ear' listener knowing nothing of him and his reputation might well class him as a quite good, but certainly not great, pianist The ''lack of exuberance'' (Crimp's diplomatic circumlocution) with which Lamond was often charged is also confirmed in his three recordings of ''Gnomenreigen'', whose gnomes, already far from giocoso in 1921, appear increasingly elderly and cautious by 1935.
But compare them with his scintillating 1929 recording of ''Feux follets'' (one of the highlights of this disc), and it is scarcely believable that this is the same player. The 1929 sessions in fact reveal an artist of stature, and all the sides made then—a week after his sixty-first birthday—are treasurable. A very fine Cuius animam and ''Petrarch Sonnet 104'' are even outshone by a brilliant ''Tarantella'' from Venezia e Napoli and the spectacular Auber Tarantelle: only an unbearably mannered Valse impromptu lessens one's admiration. Despite some splashes in the Auber, it would seem that in general Lamond was happiest in purely technical pieces: his ''Waldesrauschen'' (with the advantage of superior sound created by the 1936 Electrola engineers) is a gem.
So, overall a variable artist. How different he could be is illustrated by four recordings, spread over 15 years, of ''Un sospiro'': the first taking Liszt's classification at its face value as a technical study, the second treating it (not very convincingly) molto rubato, the third quieter and more poetic, and finally, aged 68 achieving an expressive, well-shaped interpretation.'