Tausig died about four months short of his thirtieth birthday in 1871. Lionized as the most talented young pianist of his age—he was Liszt's favourite pupil—he possessed what was certainly one of the most astonishing techniques in the history of the piano. His piano transcriptions reflect this and they in turn led a number of other pianist-composers to adapt familiar works in the same manner. The Strauss transcriptions of Rosenthal, Schulz-Evler (a Tausig pupil) and Godowsky can all be traced to this model. However, neither Tausig nor Schulz-Evler were as concerned with the polyphonic exploitation of juxtaposing themes as were Rosenthal or Godowsky.
Of the transcriptions and other pieces presented here, the only ones that have ever had much vogue in the recital hall have been of the reworkings of Nachtfalter, Man lebt nur einmal and the Schubert Marche militaire, although, as Hennig remarks in the notes, Sauer used to play the Rondeau brillant, which is based on a duet piece by Schubert. It is only in these that one can compare Hennig's performances with those of other pianists. I must say that I found the recorded piano sound so unsatisfactory as to find it difficult to form an impression of what his playing is really like. It seems that the closeness of the microphone has effectively ironed out much of the tone-colour. Nevertheless, although the pianist's grasp of the idiom is quite neat, at times he is much too conservative. The limitations in his technical confidence become very apparent in the Marche militaire. Here he fails to build up any tension at all and the trio section is a bit clumsy. Neither the Polonaise melancholique nor the Valse-caprice No. 5 in A are works that I would wish to hear again; the first goes on rather too long and the second is trivial, with a very light working of the material.
Altogether this release was rather a disappointment, especially since I had enjoyed the sister disc of Tausig's Wagner transcriptions ((CD) KTC1076, 5/90). One is left with the impression that the music is silted up with a glut of pianistic devices.
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