Overly close, monochrome engineering does not serve Daniel Barenboim’s May 28, 2007 La Scala Liszt recital well. Which is a shame, because you can sense Barenboim’s heartfelt involvement in every bar. Had the microphones captured more air between the notes, we’d actually hear rather than merely infer the variety of articulations and pedalings that prevent the St. Francis Sermon to the Birds from sounding like a mawkish tremolo study. Similarly, you wonder if the Verdi transcriptions’ big tunes would come off proudly projected as opposed to pounded out or exaggerated. Compare the La Scala Rigoletto Paraphrase with Barenboim’s earlier, more disciplined DG studio version, and you’ll get my point.
While the pianist divines more inner voices and harmonic tension from the three Petrarca-inspired selections than he did on DG, I still prefer the more direct, fluid, and better-engineered DG traversals. Interpretively speaking, Barenboim’s broader, more rhetorical and orchestrally textured Dante Sonata scores over his cleaner, more pianistically oriented DG reading, as does his relatively recent Warner Classics studio remake originally coupled with Liszt’s Dante Symphony. Perhaps this recital’s DVD edition conveys a stronger sense of occasion and venue, yet within the realm of audio only, Barenboim unwittingly faces strong competition from his younger self.
