Naxos’s project to record Liszt’s complete piano music using a number of pianists flies apace (Vols. 3 and 4 are reviewed on page 100). Vol. 2, played by the indefatigable Jeno Jando, consists of the 12 Transcendental Etudes, the ultimate test of quasi-orchestral virtuosity and of the capacity to achieve nobility rather than bathos, true eloquence rather than noisy flamboyance. Jando may create a less diabolic frisson than, say, Cziffra in the more ferocious numbers but his performances, overall, are much less wilful, less disfigured by sensational attributes and an almost palpable hysteria. No. 1 is dramatically pointed, an impressive curtain-raiser, and he can hell-raise with assurance in “Mazeppa”. His “Feux follets” hardly sparks with the all-Russian brilliance of a Berezovsky, Kissin or, most of all, Richter, but even when it hardly modulates from study to tone-poem it is still more than capable (higher praise than you might think where such intricacy is concerned).
He flashes an impressive rapier at the start of “Eroica” and there is plenty of swagger and facility in the so-called “Appassionata” etude. “Chasse-neige”, too, proceeds with a fine sense of its menacing start to a howling, elemental uproar before returning to distant thunder. Jando is less assured in introspection, bypassing some of the ardour at the heart of “Paysage”, “Ricordanza” or “Harmonies du soir” with its prophecy of an impressionism extending as far as Messiaen. “Vision” also commences tamely, yet it has to be said that all-encompassing versions of the Transcendental Etudes are hard to come by. Remarkably, Lazar Berman’s second recording, first issued in the UK in 1975 (Melodiya, 2/76) remains unavailable on CD and ironically it is this version that provides the strongest sense of ‘transcendent’ drama, the epic and revolutionary nature of Liszt’s magnum opus.
Jando is impressively recorded, though Naxos’s indecision as to whether the Etudes were composed in 1851 (their frontispiece) or 1852 (their inner notes) confuses an already chequered history.'