LISZT: “VENEZIA E NAPOLI,” “LES JEUX D’EAU...

LISZT: “VENEZIA E NAPOLI,” “LES JEUX D’EAU A LA VILLA D’ESTE,” “BENEDICTION DE DIEU DANS LA SOLITUDE,” BALLADE NO. 2. Jorge Bolet, piano. London 411 803-1 (digital). Bolet’s massive Liszt survey reaches its apogee in this sixth installment, which ranges from the delicately descriptive tone painting of the 1859 “Venice and Naples” triptych to the arpeggiated filigree of the Villa d’Este miniature. At virtually every stop, bravura yields to luminous restraint, but when Bolet directly confronts the Lisztian rhetoric, he is as likely to churn up a tempest of passion, as in the opening of the Ballade, as he is to coat the chromatic harmonies with a veneer of pellucid lyricism. Conservative, but agreeable sound.