There are some albums submitted for review where just the mention of the pianist’s name guarantees a rewarding and insightful hour or so whether it be, in Nelson Goerner’s case, Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy and Brahms or along roads less travelled. I remember his revelatory discs of chamber music by the obscure Józef Krogulski and Józef Nowakowski (Fryderyk Chopin Institute, 12/16); and no less Paderewski’s Variations and Fugue coupled with Godowsky’s Künstlerleben paraphrase from a few years later (A/19). Here he turns his attention to Liszt. It’s another feather in his cap.

We begin with Liszt as transcriber of his own music: the three Petrarch Sonnets most familiar from their place in the Italian volume of the Années de pèlerinage (1846) but, as Nicolas Derny’s excellent booklet reminds us, based on three song settings for tenor composed in 1838‑39. Their languorous introspection is well captured by Goerner, who follows them with the unexpected choice of the Valse oubliée No 2. What is the story behind this strange, compelling little piece with its first section, a half-humorous, hobbling waltz, and subdued, self-pitying second half?

The centrepiece is the great B minor Sonata. This is an assured, confident reading that it would be easy to dismiss as ‘just another B minor’, but listen to the careful way in which Goerner balances the voices in the first section, his judicious pacing and the varied dynamic gradings he gives to the big tune, and you can put this up among the best of recent versions. The way he makes the transition into the central F sharp major part is superbly done, as is the section immediately before the fugue. After the octave heroics and the work’s peroration, Goerner sees the ending not as the promise of redemption but with dying breaths and the final extinguishing of life.

To end, by way of contrast, he gives us another facet of Liszt’s many-sided genius with two virtuoso showstoppers: La leggierezza and Hungarian Rhapsody No 6, the latter rarely programmed these days, perhaps because any performance must bear comparison with Horowitz’s volcanic 1947 recording. Goerner goes for broke and certainly gives the great Russo-American a run for his money.