Surely few creative musicians have ever opened their hearts more widely to the outside world—its natural beauty, its art and literature, and last but not least its music—as this fifteenth volume in Leslie Howard's mammoth Lisztian pilgrimage, devoted to 60 of his 150 or so song transcriptions, makes very clear. In his enlightening insert-notes, Howard reminds us that the Lieder recital as we know it now simply didn't exist in Liszt's day. So for both the public and the composers themselves, such a service was immense. And I'm sure every Liszt-lover will share my own gratitude to Howard himself for so vividly bringing home the diversity of Liszt's actual choice of songs no less than his diversity of approach.
Beethoven alone provides ample proof. Recognizing Adelaide more as concert aria than song, Liszt even links its two sections with a cadenza of concerto-like bravura as well as carrying virtuosity into an amplified coda. The six sacred Gellert settings (S467) in turn bring significant changes of sequence and key so as to begin and end with matching affirmations of God's might and glory. But in the endearing lyricism of the An die ferne Geliebte cycle Liszt for the most part lets Beethoven tell his own tale—and how artfully, in the Goethe settings, he allows Beethoven's piquant figuration to spark off his own in the course of that little gem, Mephistos Flohlied (''Song of the flea'').
Moving on from Mendelssohn (whose On wings of song is surely more beautiful in Liszt's transcription, with its burgeoning imitative subtleties, than the original) to less familiar ground, I was particularly enchanted by the naive charm of the three Dessauer songs, particularly the beguiling Lockung (''Temptation''). But nothing in the collection is more remarkable than the pair of Anton Rubinstein fantasy-type transcriptions of c. 1880, where the hypnotic exoticism of the East finds an outlet with a comparative textural economy and emotional elusiveness so typical of Liszt at the keyboard in later years.
Finally Schumann, both Robert and Clara—and what gallantry that Liszt should have remembered three less than memorable songs by a lady so unappreciative of his constant endeavours on her behalf. What chivalry, too, that from Robert's output he should have selected mainly later, little-sung songs, not forgetting the five from the Liederalbum fur die Jugend, all of them literally and simply enough transcribed for children to play. But Widmung, with its glowing apotheosis, and Fruhlingsnacht are, of course, a different story. I'm only sorry to have to confess that the latter, with its elaborations and its repeat, has always struck me as one of Liszt's very few miscalculations—a misguided attempt to ''paint the lily... or add another hue unto the rainbow''.
As for Howard himself, I have nothing but praise for the immediacy of his atmospheric evocation and characterization throughout the two discs, likewise the tonal range and the subtlety and delicacy with which he differentiates textural strands in response to the actual song-texts printed in the score by Liszt in nearly every instance. You're certainly never in any doubt as to which musical line originally belonged to the voice, as Howard himself puts it. The recording itself is just as pleasing as the playing. In sum, warmly recommended.'