Any Liszt fancier is likely to have heard the Vladimir Horowitz and Alfred Cortot recordings. Also, Cohen has upped the ante thanks to his annual recitals, which have showcased his great technique and his Latin emotionality.
Wednesday's was among the better performances of the piece one is likely to hear all year. Few that I've heard have Cohen's sense of overall cohesion. But just before intermission, the kind of personal characterization he brought to Liszt's lighter-weight Spanish Rhapsody set one up to hope for a once-in-a-decade performance of the more harmonically dense sonata, the sort in which no two chords are colored the same way and phrases are articulated with endless variety.
Though Beethoven's more challenging "Hammerklavier" sonata requires a degree of study worthy of a cryptographer, Liszt's Sonata in B minor needs the imagination and daring to be the sort of cocreator that Liszt the performer was to Liszt the composer.
The piece isn't all there on the page. To render the notes dutifully is to have it dead on arrival. The many thematic reiterations need meaning beyond their progression in the piece's harmonic scheme. Some believe it's a musical travelogue of Milton's Paradise Lost.
Cohen delivered much characterization of this sort. The bass figure that appears in the opening moments and reappears periodically took on greater mystery - and actually sounded spatially more distant - the more often it came back, which isn't easy to do among the sonata's three-ring-circus qualities.
I wanted more of that and less of the rafter-storming that seems all but obligatory these days. Pianos of Liszt's time weren't capable of that. Written accounts of Liszt's own playing suggest that it was all about color - perhaps the fine filigree effects that ripple off Cohen's fingers.
Unquestionably, he has a more distinctive interpretation of the sonata in him. Will we ever hear it?
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
