The informative booklet-note here makes a point of the fact that Sauer was the only Liszt pupil to record both his concertos: what it doesn't say is that Sauer is known to have declared ''It's not correct to regard me as a pupil of Liszt: I stayed with him for only a few months when he was very old, and he couldn't teach me much''. (He had previously studied with the formidable Nikolai Rubinstein.) However, that in no way stopped him becoming eminent as a Liszt interpreter, and this disc gives impressive evidence of his keyboard mastery. Listen first of all to the handful of solo pieces it includes. The ''Gnomenreigen'', delicate and crystalline in tone, is a treasure, and there is most tender and sensitive playing, with particularly lovely pianissimos, in the Consolation No. 3 (in which he changes the last bar): ''Ricordanza'' is elegant and poetic but unsentimentalized, and ''La campanella'' again reveals pearly clarity, though it is taken at a restrained pace and there are suggestions here and there of caution.
Sauer's readings of the concertos, while not short of grandeur and breadth, are far removed from the barnstorming to which they (or at least the E flat Concerto) are too often subjected: instead, the emphasis is on the works' expressive and reflective aspects. He takes his time over the grandiose opening of the E flat—no attempt here to dazzle with speed in the cadenza—and takes full advantage of the direction slargando il tempo, a piacere at the enharmonic change to E major immediately after: the C minor theme is particularly poetic. The delicacy of his ornate passages and the firmness of his rhythmic pulse command admiration: serious piano students will be interested in his pedalling of the Quasi adagio section. The orchestral sound is inescapably elderly, the once notorious solo triangle is virtually inaudible, and towards the end there is some rather untidy ensemble.
In the A major Concerto, at the quiet start of which the surface hiss and noise of the original 78s forces itself upon the attention (elsewhere it can be overlooked), balance is less good, with a forwardly placed piano and scrawny orchestral sound. Some of the first violins, in the very high register in which some of their passages are written, sound—I was going to say out of their depth, but it would be more accurate to say out of their height. Also troubling, to listeners with sensitive ears, are some pitch questions: at the piano's first entry it is obvious that the orchestra had not tuned to it beforehand, and between what would have been Sides 2 and 3 of the old 78rpm recording there is a small but jarring pitch drop. However, these defects may be tolerated in the interest of hearing this fine pianist, whose technique remained unimpaired to the end: he recorded these two concertos when he was over 76.'