Gyorgy Cziffra (1921-94) was the greatest swashbuckler of them all and in these EMI reissues, with their shamelessly partisan insert-notes and very variable sound, he conjures up a famous cartoon of Liszt, multi-fingered, hair a-flying and with pianos cowering in fear of his assault. Few pianists in the entire history of piano-playing have flaunted their mastery or tweaked the ears of all possible puritans more outrageously. Unfortunately there is a corollary or downside to such brio and extravagance. The easy majority of these recordings were made at a time when Cziffra's high-wire pianism had become a parody of itself when, dogged by a failing career (using music as a springboard for excess was no longer fashionable) and personal tragedy, his artistry became clouded by self-defeating display; a sad case of overkill. The sparks continue to fly, the crescendos flash and detonate, the figurations reel, soar and plunge and yet... there is something forced and heartless about it all. Here, surely, is Merlin without his former magic powers.
Naturally, there are some superb exceptions, but the listener will have to work hard to winkle out the successes. Both Liszt concertos are shot through with true, rather than false, neon-lit brilliance. In the First, questionable readings of note values where crotchets so effortlessly become quavers (1'37'') and quavers become semiquavers, or liberal re-texturing for added thunder and lightning, are offset by a skyrocketing bravura and sheer style that would have astonished Liszt himself. Try the cadenza at 6'00'' in the Second Concerto, where the effect is like a sheet of flame engulfing the entire keyboard. Try also those many moments in Tchaikovsky's First Concerto where Cziffra goes in with all guns firing. His searing split chord ascent at 7'53'' will have all virtuoso fanciers by the ears, and so will his final coup de foudre, a wild drop, with the composer's notes chivvied and harried out of alignment, for the ultimate acrobatic thrill.
Elsewhere it is less easy to remain sanguine, even in Liszt. Cziffra commences ''Funerailles'' with a glaring misreading that makes nonsense of Liszt's D flat/C dissonance, a bold harmonic clash at the heart of this heroic elegy. His final inaccuracy, too, sets the seal on a performance which, for all its elemental uproar, is too careless for serious consideration. On the other hand Liszt's most delicate and picturesque brilliance (Waldesrauchen, for example) is heavily distorted, and in the first of the Annees de pelerinage how shamelessly Cziffra ignores the two quotations which preface ''Au bord d'une source'' (Schiller's ''in murmuring coolness the play of young Nature begins'') or ''Eglogue'' (Byron's ''the morn is up again, the dewy morn with breath all incense and with cheek all bloom'') in the interests of bombast and sentimentality. The B minor Sonata, too, will hardly appeal to those for whom, say, Brendel (Philips, 10/83) or, indeed, Pollini (DG, 7/90), represent musical totems in such a masterpiece. Whimsical and explosive to the last, and with characteristic alternations of violence and lethargy, this performance collapses under the strain of such egotism, and becomes a series of dazzling but inchoate fragments. The Hungarian Rhapsodies in no way compare with Cziffra's earlier set dating from the 1950s (EMI, 11/94) and the inclusion of the Rhapsodies Nos. 16 and 19 is a doubtful bonus. Clearly feeling that Liszt needed a helping hand in his old age Cziffra freely embellishes their stark outlines, and the result is a travesty of Liszt's 'late' and dark-hued manner.
Then there is Cziffra's Chopin, always a dubious proposition. Here, to paraphrase some words by the German critic, Rellstab, ''where Chopin smiles, Cziffra makes a grinning grimace, where Chopin sighs Cziffra groans''. The E minor Concerto's opening tutti is savagely cut in a manner mercifully no longer feasible, and Cziffra's performance is hardly for those who like their Chopin pure or undefiled. 'Rhapsodic' would be a polite word for such a remorselessly tricky and mannered reading. The Fourth Ballade, too, is all fun and fancy-free (though many of today's younger pianists would gladly give their eye-teeth to end the coda in such a virtuoso blaze) and the selection of Etudes, while less manic than on the earlier and notorious Philips set (9/63—nla), is coloured by the sort of rubato that suggests inebriation rather than subtle musical breathing (Op. 10 No. 3, for example). Show-stoppers such as Dohnanyi's F minor Capriccio and, of course, Cziffra's own arrangement of Khachaturian's ''Sabre Dance'', with its screaming octaves and glissandos, are marvels of pianistic aplomb, but the Ravel ''Toccata'' (bristling with misreadings) and the Scherzo from the Mendelssohn-Rachmaninov Midsummer Night's Dream are cautious and laboured (last-minute fillers learnt for the occasion?). Nor would I recommend Cziffra in baroque miniatures. His diamond-cut-diamond Scarlatti is an exhilarating exception but elsewhere one nervously senses how Rameau's and Couperin's fragile proportions are constantly menaced by the gargantuan undertow or swell of Cziffra's outsize pianism. His instability in such music stems from too much rather than from too little technique.
Out-and-out admirers will want all these recordings, but others will have to proceed cautiously. Personally, I would recommend the single disc devoted to the Liszt and Tchaikovsky concertos, before returning to the aforementioned two-disc set of the Hungarian Rhapsodies and the Rhapsodie espagnole (EMI, 11/94), the 12 Transcendental Etudes (eccentric but thrilling) and large parts of EMI's earlier eight-disc set, ''Les introuvables de Cziffra''. There you will hear the sort of performances (of the Schumann Toccata, much Liszt and Balakirev's Islamey) that have secured Cziffra a unique place in the pianist's parthenon.
For some, Cziffra returns us to a tarnished rather than golden age of virtuosity, a pianist whose self-absorption turns even the simplest gesture into Grand Opera. But at its greatest his playing is sheer wizardry, his temperament gloriously untamed, and his pryotechnical verve unique. No one else could or, perhaps, would play like him.'