Liszt & Wagner – Imogen Cooper

   in Piano International (Nov, 2017)
Here, gratifyingly, is a Liszt recital with a difference. Time was when Liszt’s change from exuberance to bitterness of spirit was seen as evidence of senility and, for Wagner, a decline into madness. Today, as Alfred Brendel puts it, ‘the denigration of Liszt has long since passed its peak’ and the dark-hued utterances of his final years are viewed as a vital prophecy of things to come. Near minimalism replaces a plethora of notes – the worlds of the ‘La campanella’ and ‘Feux follets’ or the early Hungarian Rhapsodies are but a distant memory.

Imogen Cooper enterprisingly sandwiches a selection of works by Wagner and Liszt between the hallucinatory flights of …