The "Works for harmonium" part of this album's title is a little deceptive; the works involved were pieces for organ or harmonium, and most of them were arrangements of sacred works originally composed for choir. Nevertheless, the 1875 harmonium, apparently once owned by Liszt, that's played by
Zsuzsa Elekes on the album is a lovely thing with many voices. The album helps fill out the rather overlooked picture of the role the instrument played in music of the nineteenth century. The "Works for cello and piano" part of the title is accurate but equally surprising to the casual listener, who won't think much of chamber music in connection with Liszt. The combination of these cello-and-piano works with those for harmonium is not arbitrary in the least. Represented here is the aged Liszt, dressed in Franciscan robes, greeting visitors humbly in his little Roman room, and generally making as much of a show of religion as he formerly had of quasi-demonic virtuosity. All the music is quiet, with passages in which Liszt wanders into a maze of chromaticism (often linked to the original texts in the harmonium works). Of the cello pieces (which also appeared in versions for violin or for piano alone), perhaps the most evocative and impressive is La lugubre gondola, S. 134 (The Death Gondola), which seems to condense Wagnerian sounds down to a very minimal dimension. The sound of this recording, made in 1986, is impressive for its time and place, and the performers do a good job of teasing out the showy expressiveness that lurked beneath the elder Liszt's veneer of piety. Among Liszt's late works it is the proto-atonal piano pieces that get all the attention. This album helps establish a broader view of his late output, and it's good, murky, late-night listening for anybody.