Liszt: Polonaise no.2, S.223 [De Greef (Liszt pupil)] 

A wonderful 1927 recording by Arthur De Greef - a pupil of Franz Liszt for two years.
I very much enjoy this interpretation, I find it has a certain freeness to it - evident by the little deviations from the score - which was quite common in the time this was recorded. Allegedly, Liszt was quite picky with how this piece was to be performed and refused to hear it at his masterclasses (though he did teach it 4 times between 1884 and 1886), as it was "frequently badly played and overplayed". Though, it is frankly quite overplayed, compared to the first polonaise at least. I find it quite unfortunate no.1 didn't become the "popular one". I do wonder if Liszt would have appreciated this interpretation though, but it's near impossible to know. It was recorded 40 years after De Greef met Liszt, so his playing surely changed by then - not to say he played like his teacher to begin with... I do still think it's closer to how the composer might have played his pieces to modern recordings - even when following "The composer's intentions”. In fact, I don't think it was the composer's intention for pianists to follow "The composer's intentions" as we do now. When teaching, Liszt wanted to avoid creating copies of himself; he believed in preserving artistic individuality. He may have thought that following the score (or now even manuscript) with such precision as we do now to be un-artistic. I still do think good urtext editions are a good thing; it allows you to make your own interpretation instead of following the one of the editor. Anyway, we all wish to play like the legendary composers or even just to hear them. But do we? Well one of the reasons I uploaded this is to share this historic recording - something close to how Liszt played. But I never hear serious pianists try to replicate these. Even for composers such as Rachmaninoff with recordings of himself playing, no-one tries to replicate him. Most teachers would recommend to not try to play Rachmaninoff like Rachmaninoff; "They did things we're not allowed to do nowadays". I'm starting to think we'd be disappointed listening to the legends play, compared to what we are used to. Basically, if you dream of listening to Liszt himself; listen to this, if you don't like it, you likely won't like how Liszt played. If you do like it, we can only further imagine...