Alfred Brendel's early Vox LISZT recordings Post by Lance » Wed Jan 07, 2009 7:41 pm I was recently listening to Volume 2 of Alfred Brendel's early Vox recordings [5181] of Franz Liszt's music. This pair of CDs was recorded between 1955 and 1959. I have mentioned many times that Brendel's Schubert recordings were, for me, the best Schubert he ever recorded. (Somewhere, I believe he, too, made that statement about those Schubert Vox recordings.) The Liszt solo recordings for Vox didn't always have the best sound (in mono and sometimes clangy pianos and lousy acoustics), but the artistry shines through the young Brendel nonetheless. This particular set contains a group of operatic transcriptions, the Paganini Etudes, the Sonettos 47, 104, 123, the Tarantella from Venezia and Napoli, and five sections from Harmonies Poétiques et Religeiuses. In the booklet, Bryce Morrision advises that, in a Gramophone article, Brendel ruefully coments on his first recordings. Brendel advises that they were the fruit of early necessity rather than musical wisdom. Aside from a few recordings he did this were acceptable, his general attitude was that he sees such work as little more than a best forgotten, bitter-sweet apprentiship, 'charts of a territory giving no details, no idea where there are mountains and valleys, which vegitation and climate.' Overall, I still calculate Brendel's early Liszt solo recordings as being quite remarkable. He makes an impression with his artistry more here than I could find in many of his later Philips recordings (of any music) where he was accorded the finest pianos and venues, recording equipment and sound engineers. I wonder how others feel about the early Alfred Brendel to the one we have known since, say, 1975.