Liszt: Transcendental Etude No.5, Feux Follets (Kissin)

There might just be too many good things to say about this recording, which is by a not inconsiderable margin the best performance of this piece available.

For a start, the composition itself is extraordinary. It's the most difficult of the entire set, with the demands it places on the agility of the 4th and 5th fingers, along with tricky and very rapid hand-crossing and some large LH leaps (take a look at 02:02, where all three are rather obscenely combined). But that's only the beginning: the real trick is maintaining some semblance of melody (see for example 01:14) and sustaining maddening pianissimos throughout the piece. Liszt is also at his most musically innovative here: the diminished scale features prominently in the glittering downward runs in the right hand. This might be one of the very earliest uses of the diminished scale in classical music. It's also hard not to see the beginnings of a sophisticated impressionism in here: the dramatic structure of the piece, its sudden tonal changes, and its evocation of will-o-the-wisp is near-perfect.

And it's all played with inhuman accuracy and precision (and speed, which goes without saying) -- and far more importantly, with great musicality, incredible colouring/texture, and fine dynamic control. Kissin is not always superb, but here he is at his finest.