Since in his keyboard transcriptions of Berlioz's Harold en Italie Liszt retained the solo viola, this work might be thought out of place in a series subtitled his complete works for ''solo piano''. Leslie Howard nevertheless gives it pride of place in his Volume 23, and how grateful we can be for yet another reminder of Liszt's propagation of the music of his romantically minded contemporaries. Even Paganini, who having commissioned the work declined to play it because he was cast as Byron's ''melancholy dreamer'' rather than a dazzling showman, eventually sufficiently recognized the music's worth to pay Berlioz for his pains. With only a piano to contend with, the viola—sympathetically played here by Paul Coletti—has little trouble in making its presence felt. All praise to Howard as much for his keen ear for balance as for his response to orchestral colour. Only in the more exuberant sections of the two flanking movements—and particularly the orgies of the finale—does the strain of coping with so many notes with a mere ten fingers occasionally tell.
Again including Coletti's viola, the tenderly intimate little Romance oubliee (a several times reworked transcription of Liszt's early song O pourquoi donc) comes next because of what Howard describes as its coda's ''act of homage to the marvellous viola writing at the end of the Pilgrim's March in Harold''. Of the two Meyerbeer transcriptions, I found most to enjoy in the proud, originally orchestral Festmarsch written for Schiller's centenary. But for Lisztians, the outstanding interest of the disc probably resides in his as yet unpublished and never previously recorded transcription of Gounod's now rarely heard Hymne a Sainte Cecile in either of its two unusual, originally instrumental scorings, but here emerging al with a magically pianistic spring-like translucency and grace. No quibbles about the Hyperion recording.'