Personal Demons. Liebermann, piano.

Lowell Liebermann is one of the most widely admired, and widely performed, composers of our time. Now, he makes his recording debut as a pianist, and not just in his own music, sandwiching works of Schubert, Liszt, Busoni, and the 20th-century Czech Miloslav Kabelácˇ between his own Gargoyles, Four Apparitions, and Tenth Nocturne. Liebermann’s Four Apparitions (1985) are aphoristic gems, miniatures that seem to be searching for something—a note, a rhythm, a figure—to coalesce around. The four Gargoyles (1989), with their passing hints of Liszt, Prokofiev, Scriabin, and Ravel (shades of Le gibet in the bell-like D’s of the second?), are already in the repertoires of a lot of pianists, and belong in even more. The closing Nocturne is beautiful. As executant, Liebermann goes at Liszt’s Totentanz hammer and tongs, and does a magnificent job with Busoni’s monumental half-hour-long Fantasia Contrappuntistica. There are places where a first-order virtuoso might do a smoother job with the rough stuff (e.g., the Preludio Volante of Kabelácˇ), but the fact that Liebermann makes one think of Weissenberg is high praise in itself. Excellent recording in a bright ambience, captured by Sergei Kvitko at the Blue Griffin “Ballroom” in Lansing.