Liszt: Transcendental Study, S139 No. 9 'Ricordanza'

“Wild is a major pianist whose modesty has partly concealed what these two DVDs reveal: he is a staggering Liszt interpreter, and here we have many hours of his playing and talking. Unfortunately the discs are extraordinarily confusingly laid out.” BBC Music Magazine, Proms 2008 ***

“Earl Wild (born 1915) is the last great representative of those pianists directly influenced by the playing of Rachmaninov and Hoffman: he has an all-encompassing repertoire; he composes; he transcribes; he has one of the finest mechanisms in history; he produces some of the most beautiful sounds you will ever hear from the piano (as he says himself, he was brought up to play as though every member of the audience were blind).
Among history's very greatest Liszt pianists, he is heard here in no fewer than three fulllength Liszt recitals. They were recorded before an audience over three evenings in July 1986 at Wynyard, the ancestral home of the Ninth Marquess of Londonderry, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Liszt.
'Liszt the Poet' includes the Ballade No 2, a wonderfully proportioned Dante Sonata, Funérailles and Mephisto Waltz No 1 with Wild's own and (in my opinion) much improved ending; 'Liszt the Transcriber' has 'hyphenated' Bach, Verdi, Schumann, Chopin, Paganini (stunning) and the Beethoven-Liszt Symphony No 1; 'Liszt the Virtuoso' is dominated by the B minor Sonata. Though not professionally filmed, the sound recording is quite acceptable while the picture quality is second generation video. There is also an enjoyable, homespun documentary of Wild's visit to Wynyard, the tour of the jaw-dropping estate and its immense house (boasting its own organ and played briefly by the pianist) conducted by the piano-loving Marquess himself.
On the second DVD is a 1974 BBC recital/ interview with the much-missed Robin Ray who elicits the memorable quote that 'the difference between playing a piece like the d'Albert Scherzo and, say, Beethoven Op 111 is that in the d'Albert you are a decorator; in the Beethoven you are an architect. A pianist should be able to be both.' There's an interview on the occasion of Wild's 90th birthday concert at the Concertgebouw and an additional 124 minutes of audio features: Wild lecturing (with some wickedly funny anecdotes) in 2003, interviewed by John Amis for the BBC in 1986 and Sharon Eisenhour for Philadelphia's WUHY station in 1982. What a cornucopia!” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010