We dont lack great pianists playing Liszt...For sure...
I must precise my point here...
It takes very great one to educate me to begin with about the Liszt genius which composer is underscored sometimes as a mere pianist...
These very few pianists able to play Liszt as it can sound are very rare for me... The same is true for Scriabin...
My point is that BEFORE hearing one in Liszt i was not so much admirative of Liszt...it is my insensibility and it is my fault...
The same is true for Scriabin... Almost no one can play it as he must sound for me... It takes a genius able to play it to astound me really and initiate me to a music for which i was before indifferent ...
I dont want to devalorize great pianists who played these two in an acceptable way... I am not competent enough to separate and criticize them...
But some rare pianists are on another levels...These few pianists it is easy to spot them for me now because now i put Liszt beside Bach Beethoven Monteverdi or Bruckner and the greatest composer , the same is true for Scriabin . I understand Liszt and Scriabin in the center of my being thanks to those rare pianist able to awake me ...
Then i am not competent enough to judge Sonata in B great pianists various propositions... Anyway my favorite Lisztian do not recorded it anyway ... And for me he is out of any contest so much poweful he is or can be ...and it is him who reveal the greatness of Liszt to me, nobody else.,..
Like Sofronitsky revealing Scriabin is unique and impossible to exceed ...
In a word i am not competent in pianistic interpretation to judge any pianist...
But i know what is a transcendent revelation which exceed piano playing when i hear one ...I need these few pianist Master initiators able to do that for me because i was musically ignorant and unable to discover greatness by myself alone listening various acceptable and good interpretations...
i discovered Bruckner as a revelation in the same fashion ...
And all the composers i love as Josquin Des Prez or Monteverdi or Bach etc were pure spiritual revelation not leisure listenings and ordinary casual discovery ....
I discovered Liszt after Scriabin for the same reason, i could not understand their music meanings till i listened played by a transcendant pianist... Just listening them with any great pianist was not enough to move my ignorance and my deafness... Sometimes it takes a miracle to give us sight ... It is why i loved some less well known pianist so much...
In the same way i had to wait till i listened Antonio Barbosa playing the mazurkas of Chopin to enter ectasy...The reason is the peculiar rythmic structure of these pieces asking for a pianist who feel a specific inner rythm and is able to play it with an ease and simplicity associated with a dance ... This mazurka rythm is very difficult to do it right...
My admiration are then the other side of my ignorance about music... I needed nuclear bomb playing to awaken sometimes from my indifference...
Mahgister, you mention one of my long time favorite composers (and transcribers) of music for solo piano. Liszt! Too many performers and recordings to mention but I started with Annees De Pelerinage played by Berman on DG. Great performance, I think, but not the best recording (what’s new, with DG!) and I went from there. So many of his greatest tunes are, I think, therein. And if you want to hear it all there is always Leslie Howard’s extensive collection on Hyperion. Of current performers I like Louis Lortie in this and his Chopin as well.
If a person has nothing better to do he could survey all of the available Sonata In B recordings and rate them. :-)
