Pianist
Sylviane Deferne
is a prominent teacher and performer. Her recording catalog is only occasional but always offers fresh insights. An example is this 2022 release on the
Aparte
label.
Schubert
, whose keyboard music was often unpianistic, and
Liszt
, the piano composer par excellence, are not often paired on recordings, but of course, it makes perfect sense to do so;
was one of
's first champions and transcribed or adapted a good deal of his music.
Deferne
's concept, casting
as a "wanderer" in the mold of the theme favored by
, is a bit hazy, but her playing ties the two composers together convincingly. In the
pieces,
is quiet and subtle, and a major attraction is the rarely recorded
13 Variations on a Theme by Anselm Huettenbrenner, D. 576
, a substantial set in which
worked out ideas of texture and register that would recur in his large late works. Her
D. 935 Impromptus
are evocative, gentle, a bit
Chopin
-like.
plays
's single-piano adaptation of the
Wanderer-Fantasy
, the
Fantasie in C major, S. 565a
. This, too, is rarely heard, and her grip on its thorny technical details is solid. This is a recording to cherish, to return to for new visits, and the engineering from the Salle de Musique in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland is excellent in capturing the
's low-dynamic readings. ~ James Manheim