Liszt: Étude d'exécution transcendante d'après Paganini, S. 140 No. 6

They were the two greatest pianists of their time, and friends (of a sort), yet in many ways they could hardly have been more different: Chopin the conservative revolutionary with his heart in the past; Liszt the arch-Romantic who championed the present and wrote for those as yet unborn (hurling his lance, to use his own term, ‘into the indefinite reaches of the future’). Where Chopin – except in his music – was introverted and ill at ease with crowds, Liszt was almost shockingly extroverted, and wowed the crowds in their thousands, frequently driving them near to hysteria. Chopin’s repertoire was small (though it included the complete Well-tempered Clavier of Bach), Liszt’s was apparently limitless, and richly nourished by his 700-plus arrangements of other people’s music. Yet the two men were mutually indebted. In this intriguing, insightful and illuminating recital, Emanuel Ax achieves a fascinating exercise in portraiture, celebrating one of the most ambivalent friendships in musical history (always closer on Liszt’s side than on Chopin’s). The great B minor Sonata of Chopin is permeated by his love and profound understanding of Bach, while the bulk of the Liszt arrangements reflect both his adoration of the then still little-known Schubert and the prodigal generosity and resourcefulness of Liszt’s creative mind.