Beethoven and Liszt

My friend Steve Will today blogged about Naxos music company, which publishes some of the rarest music performed. I just happen to LOVE Beethoven and Franz Liszt. There's an old story that Beethoven was present at Liszt's first Vienna concert (at age 11 years or so) in 1822, and actually kissed the apollonian youth post facto. God I wish I could have seen that. In any event, Liszt later transcribed Beethoven's nine symphonies for solo piano. Naxos has released performances of these transcriptions over time, and I've been waiting for a while for my favorite of the symphonies to be released, Symphony No. 7, with its sonorous, emotional second movement. It is, as I expected: sublime. However, my favorite in this recording is the 4th Movement, in which Beethoven's and Liszt's sonorities mingle and merge in a kind of Reece's pieces combination of classical musical rhapsody. Konstantin Scherbakov's virtuoso playing is not all pounding thunder, which I became accustomed to listening to Horowitz over the years, but has delicacy and sensitivity, and hooks your heartstrings...