Busoni wrote that, in 1909, after playing the Liszt Sonata to Liszt’s pupil Sgambati, ‘he
kissed my head and said I quite reminded him of the master, more so than his real pupils.
Busoni played the Sonata regularly on his tour of Hungary, Europe and America in 1911-
12.
Edouard Risler (1873-1929) played the Sonata at the Liszt Centenary at Heidelberg in
- Saint-Saens wrote:
‘If a prize must be awarded, I should give it to Risler for his masterly interpretation of the
great Sonata in B minor. He made the most of it in every way, in all its power and in all
its delicacy. When it is given in this way, it is one of the finest sonatas imaginable. But
such a performance is rare, for it is beyond the average artist. The strength of an athlete,
the lightness of a bird, capriciousness, charm, and a perfect understanding of style in
general and of the style of this composer in particular are the qualifications needed to
perform this work. It is far too difficult for most virtuosi, however talented they may be.’
Some sources suggest that Risler was a Liszt pupil, but he was only thirteen years of age
when Liszt died and is not mentioned by Göllerich.
The Hungarian composer and pianist Béla Bartók made a special study of the Sonata
while he was still a student but he left it because he found the first half ‘cold and empty’.
Shortly after, he heard Hungarian composer and pianist Ernst Dohnányi give a perfect
performance of the Sonata but even then he was still far from understanding it. Some
years later he returned to the Sonata because ‘its difficulties interested me.’ He gradually
came to like it as did Dohnányi.
The German pianist, composer and editor Artur Schnabel specialised in Mozart,
Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms but performed the Liszt Sonata for a time in the 1920s.
Alfred Cortot, French pianist and editor of Liszt’s piano works, recorded the first disc of
the Sonata in 1929.
The Russian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz played the Sonata in his New York
début in 1928 but the critics were divided as to his performance:
Olin Downes in the New York Times called it ‘a noble and peaceful conception, a
reading that towered above everything else ... stamping Horowitz with most if not all the
qualities of a great interpreter.’
Pitts Sandorn in the New York Telegram, on the other hand, found that the Sonata
‘oscillated between intellectual mooning and orgies of high-speed massacre, achieving a
general obliteration of rhythm and destruction of design.’
Horowitz recorded the Sonata on disc in 1932.