Complete Piano Music: Magyar Dalok & Magyar Rapszódiák

"When listening to these 22 pieces, officially entitled Magyar Dalok and Magyar Rapszódiák, you at once realise you've heard many a snatch of them before. And not surprisingly, for in fact they're the source of most of what eventually emerged as Liszt's world-wide best-sellers, the HungarianRhapsodies. The composer revels in the lavishly decorative, cimbalom-coloured, improvisational style of the gypsies, in the process making demands on the pianist variously described by Leslie Howard in his insert-notes as 'devil-maycare, frighteningly difficult, frenetic, hand-splitting' and so on. Whether because of Liszt's own waning interest in platform pyrotechnics, or the fact that only he could really bring them off, simplification seems to have been the primary aim when recasting these first flings as HungarianRhapsodies. But as Howard reveals, there are losses as well as gains in the maturer Liszt. Despite moments of protracted rodomontade there's a vast amount of enjoyment to be had."
(The Gramophone Classical Music Guide)

"Indispensable ... a vast amount to enjoy"
(Gramophone)