Liszt’s influence on his contemporaries, his younger colleagues, and today’s piano composers is the subtext of this excellent release. As I’ve previously noted in reviews, Antonio Pompa-Baldi was the 2001 Van Cliburn Competition Silver Medalist who should have been the Gold Medalist.
He opens with the last of Lyapunov’s Twelve Transcendental Etudes, a sprawling ersatz Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody. It’s not great music, but Pompa-Baldi’s fervent, full-throated execution and idiomatic flair momentarily convince you otherwise.
Many pianists would be happy to claim Pompa-Baldi’s Chopin Etudes Op. 10, although some come off better than others. No. 1’s extended right-hand arpeggios soar forcefully yet flexibly over a decisive left-hand cantus firmus. A solid, regulation No. 2 is slightly too loud and not so supple as lighter, faster readings (Backhaus, Cortot, and Saperton spoiled us all, I’m afraid!). No. 3 is fluent and well-controlled, but the middle-section ritards create an episodic, stop/go effect not to my liking. No. 4’s fancy fingerwork holds no problems for Pompa-Baldi, but his slight broadening of the concluding C-sharps is a wee bit gauche.
On the other hand, the scintillating Black Key Etude (No. 5) features convincingly capricious left-hand accents, while Nos. 7 and 10 lack for little in the inner-voice department. Pompa-Baldi’s bold melodic projection (sometimes with hands not together) and organ-like tonal heft in No. 6 is “old school” in the most positive sense of the word, as is No. 9’s rhetorical breadth. The pianist spells out No. 11’s arpeggiated chords with meaningfully varied speeds and points of emphasis, while being effectively truer to text than many pianists in the “Revolutionary” Etude No. 12.
If Pompa-Baldi’s Liszt B minor Ballade doesn’t match the nobility and finish of Claudio Arrau’s climactic right-hand scales or the anguished inflection of his broken octaves, the performance consistently flows forward and sings. I wish that were true of the Ernani Paraphrase, where Pompa-Baldi’s pyrotechnical sprinting sometimes overshadows the big tunes.
Imagine cutting up Liszt’s B minor sonata, First piano concerto, Feux Follets, and Dante sonata (among others) into bits and pieces, convincing Scriabin to reharmonize them, then hiring Georges Cziffra to play the whole mess adding improvised flourishes and unleashing cannons buried in octaves. That about sums up Roberto Piana’s Après une Lecture de Liszt, an audacious, discombobulated pudding disguised as a virtuoso showpiece. Since Pompa-Baldi throws every inch of his amazing technique and big-hearted temperament into this world-premiere recorded performance, the work need not be recorded or performed again. When Pompa-Baldi operates at his untrammeled peak, as he often does on this release, the piano world lights up.
