A less dry and drab acoustic might have cast Jozsef Balog’s Liszt Transcendental Etudes in a more flattering and fluent light. Yet the sonics only underline the pianist’s choppy phrasings and fussy distentions in the A minor Etude, or his tendency to ramble in Paysage. Mazeppa’s double-note inner voices are well controlled, but the music still comes across sounding clangorous in loud moments.
After a lithe and winged introduction, Feux Follets falls uneventfully back down to earth. Dynamic constriction similarly reins in the climaxes of Vision, although Balog’s incisive articulation of Eroica’s detached passages deserves notice. One could only imagine Balog’s febrile accounts of Wilde Jagd and the untitled Tenth Etude, or his intelligently lyrical Harmonies du soir and Chasse-neige reproduced to more resonant, flattering effect. Balog deserves better, and as such these musically uneven and sonically limited Liszt Etudes are not so transcendental, to put it charitably. Stick with Simon (BIS) and Arrau (Philips), or, for the historic-minded collector, Cziffra (EMI) and Berman (Melodiya).
