Vladimir Feltsman, Nimbus Alliance NI 6212 ****

Vladimir Feltsman opens his notes in the booklet with this CD by explaining that Liszt carried a walking stick with carvings of the heads of St Francis of Assisi, Faust's Gretchen and Mephistopheles on it. This represented his longing for the Divine, his craving for women and worldly pleasures, and his fascination with the diabolical. Feltsman's own strongest identification seems to be with the prophetic probings of Liszt's late music, those ruminative, almost unanchored works that foreshadow developments of the 20th century. It's not that he can't turn his hand as well as the next man to the Third Liebestraum or the Consolations, or the thundering Ballade No 2. But when he gets to the gloomy La lugubre gondola and the floating, flickering evanescence of En rêve, Feltsman comes into his own. url.ie/6c45