Raymond Lewenthal Plays Alkan and Liszt

The title of Élan's The Legendary Pianist Raymond Lewenthal plays Alkan & Liszt should not be taken as hyperbole; Lewenthal certainly was "legendary," a larger than life figure just as mysterious and off-center as the composers he championed. In the 1960s, Lewenthal spurred on what he called the "Romantic Revival," resurrecting from the dead obscure, hyper-virtuosic literature of the nineteenth century at a time when the classical music establishment was so absorbed with contemporary music it hardly cared. Two decades after Lewenthal's death it is easy to see how important his contribution was, as practically all of the then-unknown literature of Alkan, Liszt, Henselt, and other composers he advocated has been recorded, some of it multiple times. For pianists such as Marc-André Hamelin, the Lewenthal diet, once regarded by many as a hopelessly lost cause, is more like a main course.
The Legendary Pianist Raymond Lewenthal plays Alkan & Liszt consists of recordings that Lewenthal made for RCA-Victor in 1965 and 1966; at the time, Élan licensed and reissued this collection in 1996 there had never been aLewenthal CD on the market. In 1999, BMG released the exact same program in a limited-edition High Performance series of reissues, though that one is a bit more difficult to find than the Élan issue. What separates them is four bits; Élan's CD is a 20-bit remaster, whereas BMG's High Performance reissue is 24. Élan's booklet is a little more deluxe and detailed than that by BMG, which mainly includes the original album notes, written by Lewenthal himself.
Whatever way one obtains this, Lewenthal's readings of these works of Alkan and Liszt are essential. They are not necessarily "note perfect"; sometimes Lewenthal the editor overrules the composer, for example in the "fleas" variation of Alkan's Le festin d'Ésope Lewenthal takes the passage forte, as opposed to Alkan's specified pianissimo -- musically it makes more sense at forte, but fleas are tiny little things and perhaps that's why Alkan made it pianissimo. Lewenthal sometimes has tiny, barely noticeable finger slips and other vagaries of performance that would not be commonly found in the playing of, say, Marc-André Hamelin. However, Lewenthal's passionate playing, not to mention his sense of dedication to this music, is intense and should be heard by anyone who loves the piano.