Liszt - Réminiscences des Huguenots, S412iii (Cohen)

A stunning operatic fantasy, with an incredibly badass Finale.
Liszt’s Meyerbeer fantasies occupy an important place amongst his operatic piano works, and in his fantasy on Les Huguenots, Meyerbeer's dramaturgy is excellently captured by Liszt, his imagination catching fire from such fine material. The work was first completed in 1836, and published the following year (the original conception was enormous and ran something over twenty minutes in performance). Shortly afterwards, Liszt published an intermediate version which was shortened by one large cut, but for the reissue in 1842 (which is the version performed here) he prepared a new version using a copy of the first edition to make changes. The tightening consists of the elimination of the Andante from the Raoul/Valentine duet and the Chorus of the Assassins from the finale, and the references to Luther’s hymn Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (‘A mighty fortress is our God’) are reinforced by its use in the final bars. The fantasy is otherwise almost entirely based on material from the aforementioned duet but the novel structure of continuous variation is entirely Liszt’s own.
Arnaldo Cohen is quite at home in the Huguenots fantasy, offering a performance with refinement and ferocity in equal proportion and dismissing ambuscades of treacherous leaps (17:54!), octaves, and every other technical terror with a telling mix of verve and nonchalance.