Louis Kentner: The Pioneering LISZT Recordings, Vol. 2 = Soiree de Vienne No. 6 (after SCHUBERT); 3 Paganini Etudes; La leggierezza; Gnomeinreigen; Liebestraum No. 3; Feux-Follets; Venezia e Napoli; R.W.-Venezia; En reve–Nocturne; Czardas macabre; MEYERBEER (arr. Liszt): Illustrations du Prophete No. 2: Les Patineurs–Scherzo – Louis Kentner, piano
APR 5614, 76:35 [Distr. Harmonia mundi] ****:
Silesian pianist Louis (Lajos) Kentner (1905-1987) represents an old-world tradition he had gleaned at the Royal Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, having studied with Arnold Szekely, Zoltan Kodaly, and Leo Weiner. He made his American debut late in his career, 1956, and critic Howard Taubman hailed him as “a musician with the capacity to illuminate freshly whatever he touches as a pianist.” To an extent, this disc duplicates a number of items included in the Naxos Historical (8.111223) disc issued in England, though that disc extends Kentner’s repertory into the Balakirev Sonata, Chopin, and Walton.
This all-Liszt recital opens with a dazzling, light, even feathery interpretation of Schubert dances, the Soiree de Vienne No. 6 (17 July 1939), a realization that substantiates conductor Constant Lambert’s claim that Kentner was second only to Egon Petri as a Liszt acolyte. Power and delicacy mark the Octave etude of steps and runs from Liszt’s Paganini Studies (27 January 1942), a reading that makes Liszt both a bravura spinner of knotty challenges to the hands as well as a supreme singer of operatic lieder for keyboard. Kentner’s innate lightness of touch makes his liquid-oxygen La leggierezza Etude (10 July 1939) required listening. La Campanella’s (9 September 1946) repeated notes and glistening runs indeed signal a series of chiming little bells, the piano almost a glass harmonica in its tinkling crystal. The last page, however, suddenly lets the tiger out of the cage and swallows us with its fearful symmetries. The La Chasse Etude (13 September 1946) sounds the same “hunting” motif through a series of registers and dynamic harmonizations, each of which Kentner brings off with a sense of character, a distinct musical profile. The A-flat Liebestraum (3 September 1941), in its naïve charm and flagrant romantic innocence, appears almost an anomaly among these bravura or demonic visions.
Liszt the creator of grotesqueries finds representation in the Gnomenreigen Etude (3 September 1941), though its sublimely fleet filigree transcends the ‘dwarfish’ nature of these Liszt Nibelungen. No, for dark Liszt we find the first recording ever (10 November 1951) of the late Liszt work, R.W.-–Venezia (1883), the Venice of Richard Wagner’s death, and a clarion catacomb of despair from Poe it is. En reve–Nocturne also has its premier inscription from the same session as R.W.–Venezia. The delicate trills and bird-calls invite a quick reference to the later Oiseaux tristes of Ravel, but Liszt’s dream passes in the blink of an eye. Czardas macabre opens like few 19th Century pieces, with the guiding hands of Bartok and Ligeti. A Hungarian Rhapsody gone manic, the piece indulges in some modal, militant writing of extraordinary range and fierce modulations, unsentimental and often threatening, always brilliant.
The “sheer” bravura works–albeit lit by Kentner’s deft application of touch and rubato–include the Feux-follets Etude, the No. 5 of the set of Transcendental Etudes (23 March 1937), exquisitely remastered by Bryan Crimp from a British Columbia shellac. The flexibility of tempo, the assurance in the hands and absolute, dexterous control of the filigree proves astonishing on all levels. The 1859 Venezia e Napoli (28, 30 March 1938) opens with a rocking gondolier’s song that likes sweeping gestures in runs, trills, and ariosi, and liquid repeated notes. Kentner does not play the Canzone, but cuts directly to the imposing Tarantella, a stream of double notes and cascades from the Italian Alps. Whether the piano becomes a xylophone, cimbalom, or drum corps depends on the relative sarcasm of the auditor, but there is no denying Kentner’s relentless technique.
The Liszt ‘Illuminations’ (rather than ‘transcription,’ ‘paraphrase,’ or ‘reminiscence’) of Meyerbeer’s Les Patineurs–Scherzo in its recording debut (rec. 7 March 1939) Kentner delivers in one take–from a cut score to accommodate 78 rpm limits–a debonair salon piece in rambunctious bravura style, one step short of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The fingers seem to execute acrobatic pirouettes and double-axels with the same zal that Ms. Yamaguchi displayed at any Winter Olympics. Best of the Year contender, definitely.
— Gary Lemco
