United States Chopin, Liszt: Lise de la Salle (piano). San Francisco Performances, Herbst Hall, San Francisco, 12.3.2026. (HS)
Chopin – Ballade No.1 in G minor, Ballade No.4 in F minor
Liszt – ‘Cantique d’amour’, ‘Réminiscences de Don Juan’, Piano Sonata in B minor
I have been enchanted by Lise de la Salle’s concerts in the past, among them a romp at the Aspen Music Festival through a Mendelssohn concerto (with Nicholas McGegan at the baton) and a recital of dance-inspired music for solo piano that lifted spirits several notches. Alas, the rhythmic vitality and pinpoint execution that those performances embraced were not to be found in her San Francisco recital.
The program added two Chopin ballades to the three Liszt extravaganzas that populated her most recent album, Phantasmagoria. The ballades never quite settled into Chopin’s eloquent storytelling. The momentum that the pieces should build kept stalling in moments of unnecessary hesitations, sudden surges and an unwillingness to find the middle ground between big and loud versus subtle and quiet. Too many sections turned muddy in execution, especially when a lot of notes were bumping against each other. Clarity was missing.
Liszt’s weighty Sonata in B minor had moments which came together beautifully. The serious slow-falling scales that end up with low-range thumps or a motif that recurs carried a fine sense of foreboding. The devilishly difficult two-handed, fast-moving octaves landed flawlessly, and simple sections of respite floated nicely. Missing were the set-ups to the big moments, the glue of the narrative.
These aspects bogged down the other Liszt show-off pieces, in particular ‘Cantique d’amour’, the last of Liszt’s set of reflections on Lamartine’s poems titled Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. They made the music feel disengaged.
Better was ‘Réminiscences de Don Juan’, Liszt’s highly decorative expansion on three scenes from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Especially charming was the middle section, in which Liszt’s wit shows through in a treatment of ‘Là ci darem la mano’, wherein the Don musically seduces Zerlina, the naïve peasant girl. The treatment of the aria itself was smile-worthy, though the elaborate variations did not quite get there. The final section, based on the Don’s aria ‘Fin ch’han dal vino’, needed more vitality to convey what the music meant.
As for the ballades, as much as de la Salle looked intent and serious, the pieces never coalesced into what a ballade should be all about, that coherent narrative. Though she carefully shaped individual phases, there were too few gradations in the transitions between one section and the next for the music to make its impact.
Best of all was the encore, which she introduced with thoughts about ‘a difficult time’ in her own life and what she characterized as ‘weird’ happenings around the world causing us so much uneasiness. As a sort of balm, she chose a piano transcription of the Siciliano from J. S. Bach’s Flute Sonata in E-flat. It had all the elements that the rest of the recital missed.
Harvey Steiman