Leonid Kuzmin is a 29-year-old Russian pianist whose hair-raising facility remains sadly uncomplemented by musical insight or discipline. Coyly introduced on the jewel-box (''written by the Devil himself. Played by... just listen!''), this is the sort of razzle-dazzle that gives Liszt a bad name. For, like Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit, Kuzmin seems in a perpetual rush, anxious to move on from the Don Juan Fantasy's opening Grave declamation to busier, more superficially enticing gestures. And even then his playing is too frantic and ill-focused (try the Champagne aria) to achieve a satisfactory import or character. True, ''Feux follets'' and Gnomenreigen flash and spark with exceptional brilliance and are not without the requisite touches of wit and and fantasy, but in the Petrarch Sonnets Kuzmin's chaotic bravura plays havoc with Liszt's more subtle line, ardour and introspection. Predictably, the Hungarian Rhapsodies glitter with fun-and-fancy-free, an outsize cadenza in the Second (a-whirl with glissandos and much alien harmony) and, more generally, a swagger that excludes much beyond obvious effect.
Kuzmin's pace and aplomb are undeniable, but his is a sadly squandered talent inseparable from Debussy's equation between virtuosity and circus acts. There are regal and demonic alternative Don Juan Fantasies from Bolet and Earl Wild, while Testament promise us a reissue of Cherkassky's gloriously idiosyncratic HMV recording from the 1950s.'