A cult following among pianophiles surrounds Dubravka Tomsic, whose Mozart and Debussy recordings impressed me many years ago. I suspect she’s a more natural, unfettered Liszt interpreter on stage than in the studio. In Mephisto Waltz No. 1, for example, she puts gingerly accuracy ahead of drama and diabolic vision, and consequently undermines the big picture. Still, she does pay extra heed to tiny details like cleanly articulating upbeat triplets in the introduction and grace notes elsewhere, in addition to the color and nuance she brings to the central love music. Tomsic perfectly captures La Lugebre Gondola I’s bleak introspection, and intones St. Francis’ sermon to the birds with delicately adjusted filigree and trills shaped from hot glass beads. The Second Legend, however, is too stolid, square, and in dire need of more sustain pedal in the bass register rumblings: Tomsic seems to depict St. Francis crawling across the Sahara rather than proudly walking atop the ocean’s crashing waves.
On the other hand, Tomsic’s sec approach to portions of the Liszt Sonata lend unusual clarity to the exposition’s sweeping left hand runs and the fughetta, in a manner similar to Leon Fleisher and Clifford Curzon. If the climatic right hand octaves seem too cautiously dispatched, Tomsic positively throws herself into the infamous double octave passages, and imposes a huge, effective crescendo on the last four notes of each phrase. It’s a smaller scaled Liszt Sonata next to heroic reference versions from Arrau, Richter, Argerich, Levy, and Bolet, but Tomsic’s serious, thoughtful musicianship sustains her conception and is certainly worth hearing on that account. Let’s just hope Tomsic decides to record her next Liszt recital in front of an audience.
