Exploring the outer reaches

By WILLIAM DART

As if recording 95 CDs of Liszt's complete piano works were not testing enough, Australian Leslie Howard has added a 96th with his New Liszt Discoveries.

Gathered from various sources, including manuscripts, the music ranges from miniatures written for the young Princess Marie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein to Hungarian folksong arrangements which hint at a Bartok yet to come.

Don't be frightened off by the occasional sketches, a few of which run at under 30 seconds - they're charmers; and the opening Album-Leaf could easily have been snatched up by Max Steiner or Franz Waxman to fuel a major Hollywood concerto. You don't have to be a Liszt scholar, either, to enjoy the composer's first thoughts, especially an early version of Sursum Corda. Its restless, surging harmonies bloom under Howard's fingers.

The piece de resistance is the dark, sinister La lugubre gondola, which has the spirit of Death in Venice running in its bars - more so in this first take, before Liszt smoothed it out into a more homogenised barcarolle.

A few years ago, Howard stunned a Concert Chamber audience with a virtuoso Liszt recital. This fine CD brings that wonderful evening back to me.

Irish pianist Philip Martin is working his way through the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk and we're up to Volume 6.

This "New Orleans Liszt" was one flamboyant chap, although if you want to experience some of his more original compositions, such as the ragged Stephen Foster tune in his Banjo or the primal rhythms of his so-called chansons negres, you'll need to search out Martin's first two volumes.

The music on this most recent CD is very much of the salon brilliant waltzes and luscious mazurkas (including the lovely, fluttering Jeunesse); signing off with a "Grande fantaisie triomphale" on Donizetti's La Favorita, which Martin takes very, very seriously ... and plays very, very beautifully.

Twenty or thirty years ago, Gottschalk was a curiosity, best known for so-called "Monster Piano Concerts" in which upwards of a dozen grand pianos were put into the service of far less chords.

In this comparatively restrained collection, Martin and Hyperion remind us of the elegance of a bygone age.* Leslie Howard, New Liszt Discoveries (Hyperion CDA 67346) Philip Martin, Louis Moreau Gottschalk: Piano Music Volume 6 (Hyperion CDA 67349)