Leslie Howard’s voyage through Liszt’s complete piano music is one that has yielded discoveries, even for this most indefatigable of Lisztians himself, but here is the first disc of this long series in which, it seems, absolutely everything recorded is unpublished material. That needs a little qualification, since for Liszt composition was a process that never seemed to end with blotting the final page (including when other composers had done the blotting and he was playing their works). Like so much in his music, the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses went through several creative stages. What we have here exists in other forms, and the complex history of the music is set out in Howard’s insert-note with the knowledge of the sources and the musical perception which make these essays in themselves a contribution to Liszt scholarship.
For the equally indefatigable (and well-financed) Liszt collector, this is a worthy addition to a series that is said to be going to cover 92 CDs. For the less specialist listener, there are several particular attractions. The most powerful is the strange (even by Liszt’s standards) Prose des morts, a treatment of the De profundis chant that draws on the augmented harmony of which he was by then a master but also looks forward to the weird, virtually atonal pieces of the last years to which this harmony points. There is also, in a number of the pieces here recorded, the inward, meditative quality which is not only religious but to some extent technical, as Liszt explores the resources of his craft. This requires an intellectual appreciation of what is taking place no less than the keyboard virtuosity which in later years receded. Howard is a match for all that Liszt throws at his performers; he also has the understanding to keep such pieces as the little Priere d’un enfant simple and still charged with feeling.'