This is Can Çakmur’s second album for BIS. The 23-year-old Turkish pianist’s first, which included works by Beethoven-Liszt, Schubert, Haydn, Fazıl Say, Fuyuhiko Sasaki and a truly remarkable Bartók Out of Doors, was released last year, hot on the heels of his victory at the 2018 Hamamatsu Competition. This new disc presents his bona fides as a Liszt interpreter, and they are impressive.

The choice to record the entire Schwanengesang is an audacious one. This collection of late Schubert songs was compiled posthumously by the publisher Haslinger. Liszt had played Schubert song transcriptions in his famous Viennese concerts during April and May 1838. They proved so popular that, within a year, he had transcribed another 38 of them, including all 14 of Schwanengesang. Individual songs have not left the standard repertory since but it is rare to hear the cycle as a whole. In hands as gifted as Çakmur’s, however, their cumulative effect is all but overwhelming.

Çakmur creates his own ordering of the songs, as Liszt himself had done with Haslinger’s. The key here, however, is not the progression of moods but the depth and adroitness of their characterisation. They begin with ‘Liebesbotschaft’, as delicate and ardent a love letter as one can imagine. The impassioned soldier’s soliloquy of ‘Kriegers Ahnung’ shifts seamlessly between anguish and reverie. ‘Abschied’, conjuring insouciant leave-taking of the familiar, is paired with ‘In der Ferne’, and the chill of having left without farewell or blessing. Stark, desolate, terrifying imagery is evoked in pieces like ‘Die Stadt’, ‘Doppelgänger’ and ‘Der Atlas’, while others such as ‘Ständchen’ and ‘Taubenpost’ are lent an operatic urgency and dimension without sacrificing their essential simplicity. In each instance Çakmur’s conception is vividly persuasive and the pianistic wherewithal abetting his vision secure.

The four Valses oubliées, composed between 1881 and 1884, provide the perfect pendant to the Schubert settings from four decades earlier. Most striking are Çakmur’s sane tempos. In contrast to the breakneck speed usual for these pieces, he follows Liszt’s indications and opts for tempos that are actually danceable. Only the second and third waltzes bear a dedication, both to Olga von Meyendorff, Liszt’s close Weimar companion in later years, and this may account for the gentle tenderness enveloping Çakmur’s readings. The first waltz exhibits luscious pianissimo and legato leggiero, while the slightly antic second has a lovely music-box quality with all attendant rhythmic subtlety. Meanwhile, the delightfully playful third waltz creates a magic all its own.

Given the wealth and range of his musical imagination, not to mention his genuine pianistic gifts, I believe Can Çakmur is someone from whom we can confidently and happily expect to hear a great deal more.