Alban Berg, Leoš Janáček, Franz Liszt, Dénes Várjon

Precipitando is the first solo album on ECM New Series by the Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon, until then known on the label as a chamber musician. The recital is built around one of the central keyboard works of the nineteenth century, Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor. Before it come two pieces written in its wake, Alban Berg's Piano Sonata op. 1 and Leoš Janáček's In the mists. The title is a tempo marking for a headlong rush, and the programme moves from Berg's brooding chromatic language through Janáček's half-lit miniatures to the full sweep of Liszt.

Várjon had appeared on ECM in Heinz Holliger's Romancendres and in Schumann's violin sonatas with Carolin Widmann. This recording was made in April 2011 at the Auditorio of Radiotelevisione svizzera in Lugano, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due. Manfred Eicher produced it, Markus Heiland was the Tonmeister, and the booklet carries a note by Paul Griffiths.

Berg's single-movement sonata, begun in 1907 under the guidance of Arnold Schoenberg and revised in 1920, swings between turbulence and lyrical reflection in a dense, late-tonal idiom. Janáček's four pieces of 1912 are more fragmentary, moving from the opening Andante to a restless Presto. The ECM Reviews critic heard Várjon's account as brighter than András Schiff's earlier, more autumnal recording for the label, singling out the Andantino and the Presto. The Liszt fills more than half the disc. Várjon leaves wide spaces between its sections without losing the line, and gives the fugue real weight.

Fiona Maddocks wrote in The Observer that "Várjon is always perceptive as a chamber musician. It's a treat to hear him alone." In the Sunday Herald Michael Tumelty went further, calling the Liszt "a monumental version of the masterpiece". Andy Gill in The Independent praised "the ability to play in a way which makes you listen anew to the familiar". Dominy Clements, reviewing the album for MusicWeb International in 2012, preferred other versions of the Liszt but found Várjon "excellent throughout" in the Janáček.

CD edition of ECM New Series 2247, first released on 27 January 2012.