Lise de la Salle’s highly accomplished virtuosity and innate sense of drama easily lend themselves to Franz Liszt’s wide-ranging piano idiom. The opening Dante Sonata brilliantly showcases the young pianist’s octave technique and sweeping fluidity, although other pianists like Jorge Bolet, Mûza Rubackyté, and Louis Lortie bring more textural variety and harmonic richness to the table. She successfully conveys the stark dynamism of the Lacrymosa After Mozart and Nuages gris, although her slight impatience over the B minor Ballade’s lyrical sections yields to Stephen Hough’s more convincing fusion of bravura and repose. Yet even considering Laszlo Simon’s superior clarity, color, and greased lightning scales in Mazeppa, de la Salle’s super-confident grasp of the unwieldy keyboard writing cannot be discounted.
Because I’m permanently spoiled by Vladimir Horowitz’s multi-hued legatos and three-dimensional melody/accompaniment separation in the Liszt/Schubert Ständchen and Liszt/Wagner Liebestod, I’m less convinced by de la Salle’s more generalized, less shapely readings. However, Funérailles (a Horowitz specialty) reveals a fuller and more impassioned idea of the pianist’s tonal and expressive potential; so does the eloquently-spun Liszt/Schumann Liebeslied. A fine disc, overall.
