Liszt: Dante Sonata (Nakamatsu, Khozyainov, Korstick)

A stunner of a work. The Dante Sonata is basically a massive set of thematic transformations on two (linked but very different) themes, interleaved within a sonata form. The efficiency of the musical engineering here is insane – all the music here is derived, more or less, from just a chromatic scale and a descending tritone motif, and yet the result is 16 minutes of music which traverses huge emotional terrain. Within this already impressive large-scale framework, Liszt also inserts many moments of harmonic/textural/structural magic. For instance – the whole-tone harmonic descents you get at 10:49 and 15:37 are actually extensions of the modal colour of the second theme at m.103 (take T2’s opening I-bVII mixolydian progression and iterate it). And that heart-stopping moment at 8:31 when the key slips, with improbable tenderness, from F# to C? Well, it’s just an elaboration of the tritone motif. As indeed are the octatonic scale (3:38) and a long passage built around a chain of chords a minor third apart (11:05).

A brief word on Liszt’s thematic transformation of Theme 1 here, which is unusually ingenious even by his standards. T1 is essentially a descending and rising chromatic scale (1:52). It never really goes away in this basic form – it recurs in in a bunch of transitions – but over the course of the work Liszt gradually de-chromatises it and emphasises its descending opening phrase (5:13), so that it eventually turns into a simple major descending scale. And yet it sounds utterly gorgeous! (See 8:36, 15:11). It’s such a radical transformation it feels like reality-warping.

Interpretively, the Dante Sonata is one of those works with a high floor and a high ceiling. So much of what makes it effective is structure and harmony – and those you can’t really mess up, they’re just there in the score. Where a recording can go from merely good to great is in the textures Liszt writes, which give lots of space for an imaginative or sensitive pianist to do amazing things. The three recordings here do a pretty stellar job:

00:00 – Nakamatsu. A goldilocks recording – not extreme in any direction, but featuring robust, intelligent musicianship and filled with many lovely touches. The phrasing is especially nice – Nakamatsu has a wonderful rhetorical style. See for instance the broadening at 1:11 (m.20), the agogic separation of phrases at 2:10, the entrance T2 at 4:01, the staccato octaves at 5:50, or the lovely rubato at 6:54. There are some pretty creative things that Nakamatsu throws in the mix too. For instance, at 10:18 he directly contradicts Liszt’s piu mosso marking to slow the tempo down quite drastically, but it really works – Motif A opens up into a sudden, sharp grandeur. And at 9:20 he emphases the first of every 4 LH chords so as to create a macabre march.

16:24 – Khozyainov. A performance that excels in the fuzzy places – in everything quiet, dreamy, penumbral. Comes across as almost anti-virtuosic, even though there is lots of virtuosity on display here. Khozyainov has a fantastic gift for texture – I don’t think the primordial, muted entrance of T1 or those despairing accents Liszt places at 18:24 have ever been captured better. The care lavished on T2 is remarkable – at 23:42 for instance (m.147) Khozyainov captures the rhythmic tension between the RH triplets and LH dotted rhythm very well (most pianists tripletise the dotted rhythm). And in the quiet moments the playing is just out of this world – just listen to how the upper voice is separated from everything else at 24:11 (and how the percussive sound of the hammer hitting the string becomes almost as important as the actual pitches). And from 25:07 (m.167) onwards, how the gossamer-thin RH builds before busting into glory at m.175.

33:30 – Korstick. My go-to recording most days of the week, and a real monument in the history of Liszt playing. Epic in scope and conception, huge contrasts in dynamic range and colour, taut tempi. No prettiness for prettiness’ sake : consider T1’s first entry at 35:05 – the whole thing is played as one huge phrase, building from a lament into a blizzard of pure terror. Similarly the apocalyptic intensity of f T1/Motif A at 43:29, or the nervous intensity of the tremolo at 42:15. When the music calls for it, though, Korstick can be extraordinarily sensitive. At 39:10 (m.136), T2 is given lovely cantabile treatment; at 40:40 (m.157), a gauzy harmonic haze gently buoys T1; and at 45:43, T2 starts outs in non-measured tremolos that almost unnoticeably slip into measured ones when the melody gains momentum – fantastically subtle but very effective stuff.