This enterprising recital re-enacts a celebrated musical duel. In 1837 Liszt, arguably the most charismatic virtuoso of all time, was challenged for supremacy by Sigismond Thalberg, a pianist who could apparently not only counter Liszt's legendary fire and thunder with subtlety but who played as if with three hands. Three hands were heard, two were visible! Such legerdemain quickly had novelty-conscious Paris by the ears, and an elegant white kid-glove rather than a mere gauntlet was thrown down before Liszt. Stung and infuriated by what he saw as Thalberg's aristocratic pretensions (Liszt showed a lifelong mix of envy and contempt for the aristocracy), Liszt replied with corruscating scorn, dismissing Thalberg's compositions as ''so empty, so mediocre'' and finding similarity—where depth was concerned—between his playing and the diamond studs that embellished his dress shirts. A confrontation took place and although it was diplomatically concluded that ''Liszt was the greatest pianist; Thalberg the only one'', the outcome was inevitable. Liszt continued on his protean and trail-blazing course while Thalberg was consigned to virtual oblivion.
The point is made with considerable cunning by the American pianist Steven Mayer. For while his performances of the two Thalberg Fantasias are beautifully stylish and authentic, their bejewelled intricacies dispatched with nonchalant and fine-toned ease, his way with Liszt's Divertissement (a work central to the composer's triumph in his duel with Thalberg) and ''Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude'' suggest a poetic range unknown to Thalberg. Indeed, wild glitter and audacity (precursors of Prokoviev's iconoclasm) are unthinkable from other than a musical genius. Here is Liszt's terribilita, his 'Mephisto March', if you like, its savage and insistent tread punctuated with demonic bursts of laughter. The ''Benediction'', on the other hand, represents an opposite extreme, an intoxicatingly rich and incense-laden declaration of faith, its ceaseless elaboration and harmonic life already foreshadowing Messiaen. To end with such a work stresses Liszt the poet and supreme lyricist rather than Liszt the virtuoso. What price Thalberg's beguiling Moise Fantasy or his merely clever God Save the Queen Fantasy in the face of such genius? Liszt was the greater pianist and, above all, the greater composer.
Liszt's relatively straightforward transcription of Weber's Konzertstuck is less interesting and Mayer's performance, while fleet and energetic, is hardly the sort to make you forget the absence of orchestral colour in this scintillating and chivalric vision. But in the ''Benediction'' he is at his most distinctive and persuasive. Less Olympian or luxuriant than Brendel (Philips, 5/78—nla) or Stephen Hough (Virgin Classics) respectively, in their magnificent recordings, his phrasing is none the less long-breathed and eloquent, notably in the final ecstatic climax and in the after-glow of the epilogue.
The New York-based recordings are not ideally vivid or immediate, but with such a programme and such distinguished performances one hardly notices. Mayer writes his own excellent notes.'