This richly comprehensive reissue shows Alfred Brendel in his early years as a towering Lisztian proclaiming Liszt’s genius at a time when, notably in London and Vienna, there were still accusations of vulgarity; of music ranging from vainglorious display to senility. For his 1951 recording debut Brendel chose the Christmas Tree Suite, profoundly suggestive music from Liszt’s final prophetic and dark-hued period. And here in particular, challenged by such unsettling ambiguity, Brendel plays with an imaginative insight and delicacy given to very few pianists. How hauntingly he conveys a work moving from innocence to experience, from simple Christian piety magically evoked in familiar carols, flickering candlelight and a joyous peal of bells, to the pain and desolation of Liszt’s final years. What heartfelt anguish in ‘Ehemals!’ (roughly ‘long ago’), what sinister propulsion in ‘Ungarisch’ or irony in the faux-heroic conclusion to ‘Polnisch’. A dark night of the soul indeed and ill-advised late-night listening to those unwilling to retire haunted by such despair.

A brighter note is sounded in the two operatic paraphrases, thrown off with superb sweep and grandeur, and in the six Paganini Etudes, where Brendel combines virtuoso grandeur (that steam-whistle trill at the climax of ‘La campanella’) with an ever-enlightening wit and perception. The recorded sound may be primitive but nothing can dim such musical quality, as well as one’s sense of the absurdity of Earl Wild’s recent claim in his nearly 900-page-long memoirs (8/11) that ‘Al’ was no Lisztian and a musician of severe limitation.