Following his earlier Delphian disc of the B minor Sonata (A/07), David Wilde continues with Liszt, complementing the first Mephisto Waltz and ‘Funérailles’ with the vocally inspired three Liebesträume and three Petrarch Sonnets. Wilde, if these performances are anything to go by, long ago lost interest in received convention or opinion. He’s happy to go his own way, with performances that are heavily idiosyncratic – nothing taken for granted. And if the Mephisto Waltz gives him a hard time, you can sense him striving for a diablerie beyond a familiar, more streamlined and impersonal virtuosity.

In the second Liebestraum he is lost in reverie before taking a brisk view of the third, as if to avoid sentimental malingering in music that appears in virtually every ‘those you love’ anthology. ‘The sighs, the tears, the longing’ (Wilde’s own free translation) of the 47th Sonnet also get short shrift, the poetry rushed and chivvied. On the other hand, in both the 194th and 123rd Sonnets, Wilde is so determined to wring the ultimate out of every note that the music comes perilously close to a halt. This, then, is a personal view of Liszt that will startle admirers of, say, Wilhelm Kempff in Sonnet No 123 (Music & Arts), a classic and inimitable example of how less can be more.