'Homage" Liszt Am Gralo Richard Wagners, S202. Lugubre Gondole, S199a. Deux Lugubre gondole, S200— 1st version. Piano Sonata, SI78. RW Venezia, S201. Tristan und Isolde: Liebestod (Wagner), S447 Wagner Eine Sonate für das Album von Frau MW Thomas Hitzlberger pf Ambronay AMY008 (77' • DDD) Once the Liszt tributes drew scorn: now we see how courageous they were

This boldly enterprising irTirdisc remembers Liszt's homage to Wagner. Generous to a fault, Liszt basked in Wagner's genius only to find himself coldly rebuffed by his son-in-law and by other prominent figures of his time. For cautious Clara Schumann the pieces he sent her were "dreadful", while for the critic Eduard

Hanslick the B minor Sonata, a towering masterpiece in the history of music, was the work of a composer who "should be reduced to silence". For Wagner, the dark-hued prophecies of Liszt's final years were "completely devoid of meaning".

Today, it is chastening to recall such blanket incomprehension when Liszt's courageous experiments fell on deaf ears and were viewed as the products of senility. And Thomas Hitzlberger, who plays his programme on Liszt's own 1873 Steingraber instrument, writes movingly of Liszt's despair and a desolation that could have reduced a less resilient man to suicide.

His performances, too, are of an exceptional breadth and seriousness. In the baleful Lugubre gondole Nos 1 and 2 he makes every note tell, and he is very much at the heart of the everelusive B minor Sonata. A true rather than flamboyant Lisztian, he would surely be among the first to salute Jorge Bolet's dictum that "speed is the enemy of excitement". All these performances are deeply committed and finely recorded. Bryce Morrison