Because new here, Bolet's Consolations first. These six pieces date from 1849-50, when Liszt has just abandoned the concert platform to become Music Director at Weimar. Lyrical charm, more intimate than demonstrative, is their keynote, and Bolet captures this in playing of touching simplicity—even in the heart-tugging nostalgia of the nocturne-like No. 3 (plainly a tribute to Chopin, who died in 1849) and the one brief surge of passion towards the end of the last. And since Liszt's key-scheme indicates how clearly he meant them to be played in sequence as a set, I also must liked the effortless way each melts into the next in Bolet's performance.
Even in the disc's opening and closing reminders of Liszt the virtuoso, Bolet eschews all flamboyance. Looking around my shelves for rival Don Juans I discovered an old 1966 EMI recording by John Ogdon who, incidentally, also plays the longer of Liszt's two versions—and found his tempo infinitely more dare-devil for the champagne home-coming. Though no slave to the metronome in the ''La ci darem'' interlude, Bolet never lets himself be carried away in the heat of excitement.
The Liszt he presents is always supremely in control of his emotions, with some loss of youthful immediacy but also some imposing intellectual gains. Arrau (Philips—LP only) came to hand on my shelves for comparison in the two Concert Studies, ''Waldesrauschen'' and ''gnomenreigen''. If slightly less seductive in phrasing and sonority than Arrau in the former, Bolet scores with his crystalline clarity and rhythmic precision in the latter.
Recorded sound is agreeable except, again, for a slight touch of steel above a certain dynamic level in the treble.'