Gerhard Oppitz is a deeply serious artist who also possesses a virtuoso technique, and in this he resembles Peter Donohoe, having also been born in the same year, 1953. I have liked him in Brahms, and this Liszt recital may also win him admirers—I see that he also recorded the two piano concertos and Hungarian Fantasia with Roberto Abbado and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (reviewed in June). Here, he makes a choice of solo piano music that usefully mixes bigger and smaller pieces. The Variations, with which he begins, are the longest work, and show us the composer in intense baroque mood as he develops his ideas upon a ground bass from Bach's cantata of that name. The pianist takes an equally broad view and allows the music to unfold with appropriate grandeur: indeed, this is a big performance in every sense...
