I have not previously encountered Michael Korstick (b1955, Cologne) though the booklet tells me his “pathbreaking” recording of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier earned him “a permanent and prominent place in the consciousness of a broad public”. His recordings have won an Echo Klassik (2005), a Midem Classical Award (2009) and several other prizes.

This disc couples a new recording of Volume 1 of Années de pèlerinage with a reissue of Korstick’s 1997 debut recording of the B minor Sonata. No doubt about his technical credentials. Korstick has bravura to burn and a fine sense of drama. He is also, clearly, a thoughtful musician. Yet despite these essential Lisztian prerequisites his performances left me impressed but uninvolved. The final pages of Vallée d’Obermann, marked sempre animando sine al fino and beginning mf, are representative. Korstick launches into them full tilt, leaving him nowhere to climb to the thrilling climax nine bars before the end. Lazar Berman (DG, 12/77^R), Arnaldo Cohen (BIS, 12/04) and Daniel Grimwood (SFZ, 7/09) are among those who manage this far better, to say nothing of Volodos’s breathtaking (and impudent) execution (Sony, 7/07) and Horowitz’s raw intensity (RCA).

All that glitters is not gold, and the Sonata suffers from the same lack of musical imagination. Try the very last bars: Cohen offers the radiant last moments of life; Korstick merely wraps up the piece. Some of the most vertiginous passages lack clarity (for instance at 7'45" et sequens and again at 20'40" – there are no separate tracks for the work’s various sections). The booklet offers a lengthy apologia and detailed analysis of both works in a translation that introduced me to several new English words.