Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 15: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5 (Transcriptions)

“It is Scherbakov’s achievement that he makes Liszt’s piano transcriptions of these Beethoven symphonies sound so pianistic. With wonderfully crisp articulation and fluent passage-work, textures are clarified, and the freshness and energy of the writing are strongly brought out both in the exuberantly youthful No. 2 and the darkly dramatic No. 5. This is as imaginative as Cyprien Katsaris’s Teldec accounts from the days of LP, and no one with a taste for keyboard heroism should overlook them. He is vastly superior to Leslie Howard’s pedestrian set on Hyperion. He is, so to speak, more of a Weingartner than a Toscanini (as was Katsaris) but his Fifth still has that barnstorming quality that arrests your attention. At super-bargain price, well worth investigating even by those who shy away from transcriptions. Excellent, clear piano sound.” ***