Haochen Zhang’s 2023 recording of Liszt’s Transcendental Études stands up to any. On this follow-up, he’s raised the stakes by choosing two works that are even more aesthetically challenging and more abundantly represented in the catalogue. The results, unfortunately, don’t leave quite as strong an impression.

True, there’s plenty to marvel at. His precision is stunning – the bounce he brings to the streams of notes in the finale of the Beethoven, the clarity he gives to the bel canto filigree in the Liszt, the assured voicing and dynamics throughout. Then, too, as his artistry develops, he’s ever more willing to step back from his brilliance to serve up subtler beauties: the low-pressure dreaminess that floats through the Adagio of the Beethoven (which dies out exquisitely), the feline grace of the fugue in the Liszt. And the way in which the quiet music melts away before that fugue arrives, like the redolence of Liszt’s closing page, may transport you.

Yet offsetting Zhang’s power and polish are a series of interpretative oversights. Some are simply fleeting misfires. In particular, the surprising articulation and momentary tempo bending that work so well in his Transcendental Études sometimes seem arbitrary here. But others are more consequential miscalculations that obscure the music’s design. There’s not much sense of arrival when we get to the first-movement recapitulation in the Beethoven, for example. And his cursory treatment of the first statement of the Grandioso theme in the Liszt not only dilutes the majesty of the moment but also undercuts its later formal function.

Listen to Marc-André Hamelin, Sviatoslav Richter or Earl Wild (to mention just three radically different pianists who have taken on both of these works), and you’ll find deeper understanding of the music. Still, anyone who listens to Zhang will be amply rewarded, too.

This review originally appeared in the SUMMER 2025 issue of International Piano – Subscribe Today