The pre-eminent Lisztian of our day returns to Brilliant Classics for a symphonic sequel of transcriptions.

In 2018, Brilliant Classics issued Leslie Howard and Mattia Ometta playing the 12 symphonic poems of Liszt in the composer’s own transcriptions for piano duo (95748). The set won glowing reviews: ‘Not only do Leslie Howard and Mattia Ometto navigate Liszt’s technical challenges with fluency and ease,’ wrote Jed Distler for Classics Today, ‘but they also treat the scores seriously… Howard’s excellent annotations and Brilliant Classics’ budget price further clinch my recommendation for collectors.’

As before, Leslie Howard supplies his own, invaluable insights to accompany this trio of symphonies in Liszt’s transcriptions for piano duo. As with the symphonic poems, Liszt remains utterly faithful to the originals, preserving the spirit and sound of the orchestral scores without compromising the texts and, in the case of Beethoven’s Ninth, being scrupulously attentive to his hero’s great masterpiece. Howard and Ometta observe all of Beethoven’s (and Liszt’s) repeat markings in the Scherzo, presenting the fullest and most authentic text available.

The Faust Symphony has long been recognised as Liszt’s greatest orchestral work, and it ranks with the B minor Piano Sonata and the oratorio Christus as the noblest of his musical achievements. The two-piano version reached its final form by 1863, before Liszt added a short, ethereal passage to the coda of the second movement in 1880, and these bars are added in the present performance.

By its side, the Dante Symphony has often been overlooked and unjustly disparaged. Yet few compossers have depicted hell and damnation as vividly as Liszt (despite the composer’s own deep and optimistic Christian faith) in the opening Inferno movement, and its companion portrait of Purgatory is a wholly original musical conception whose harmonies prefigure many things later familiar from Wagner’s Parsifal or the symphonies of Bruckner.

Rather less familiar is Liszt’s transcription of his Rákóczy March for two pianos and eight hands, for which Howard and Ometta are joined by Leonora Armellini and Igor Roma. Unlike his solo-piano transcription of Beethoven’s Ninth, this piano duo version incorporates all the vocal parts within the instrumental texture.