Stride: don't overlook the 3/8 variation of Schubert's Trock'ne Blumen, er, variations. Or for that matter the last cadenza in the Shostakovich 1st concerto.

We are put in mind of our great English writer Frederick Rolfe, son of a Dissenting piano manufacturer, and author of "Stories Toto Told Me." As is well known he was wont to sign himself "Fr. Rolfe," wishing thereby to memorialize his priestly purpose.

One's baptized name is often a Latinized version of one's given name. Ferenc is simply a Hungarian Franz.

How funny! Following the appearance of Liszt and the Tausig transcriptions on the Musical Connections thread, I went along to the Naxos site and picked the Verdi transcriptions disc (typical IGI some would say!!) to sample whilst I read through this thread, only to arrive at Jonathan's last message and find the same disc recommended! I think, having heard the Don Carlos 'Auto-da-fé', that this is certainly one to buy.

On whole cycles, Jonathan (and other pianophiles!), do you think there could be an advantage in Naxos recording discs by a number of different pianists? Also, what do you think of Leslie Howard? I recall that reviews of his Hyperion discs being a bit non-commital, implying that there wasn't quite the level of performance you'd always hope for, but most of the discs contained music you couldn't hear elsewhere, so it was worth having anyway.
I don't have a huge amount of Liszt's solo piano music - the Decca Bolet box, Brendel's Années de pèlerinage discs and Cziffra's Transcendental Studies and Hungarian Rhapsodies (the orchestral versions of which were largely my introduction to classical music, No.2 being my favourite piece for some years) and Pletnev's DG recording of the Sonata. I'd be interested to hear of other discs people think are particularly outstanding.

Quite a lot of people seem to have critised Leslie Howard's recordings for one reason or another but I find him to be very good and consistent with them over the whole 15 years of recordings.  Ok, there are the odd pieces which others have made more of but in some cases, as I've said elseware, his are the only recordings.  I still await a volume 3 of newly discovered works (hint, hint, Hyperion!)
Although I hate knit-picking and saying bad things about people online where they can read them, one of the more recent Naxos CDs has the Grossekonzertsolo on it and, good though it is, it lasts a good 7 minutes longer than Howard's recording and just doesn't hold together as well.  (The rest of the CD is excellent though.)  I've heard several recordings of this particular work (and played it myself) and Howard certainly for me, is the best that I've heard thus far.  Likewise, with his recording of the Scherzo and March - others have made superb recordings but they don't hang together as well as the Hyperion one.  Having said that, Demidenko's (now on Helios) Scherzo part is certainly more demonic than LH's although his [LH's] March is more evil sounding!  He is also really good in the late pieces - the weird almost atonal works from the 1870s onwards.  Hyperion's Volume 11 includes most of these and really is the best available on one CD.  Valerie Tryon's recording of Bunte Reihe (Naxos vol.12 (I think)) is as good as LH's and, although the two are almost identical in timings, they make an interesting comparison of a different way to play the same music.
This is just the start - I'll continue with this tomorrow as I'm tired now!

Thank you for that, Jonathan. I shall try and sample some of the Naxos and Howard discs some time soon. I see there are some soundclips available on the Hyperion website, mostly from the later issues. I wonder if they'll release a complete box as they did with the Schubert Songs edition? No...I shouldn't even think about it!

Thanks for that Increpatio, I didn't know that!  I think they already did a boxed set of all 95 (it excludes the 2 new discoveries ones) at one stage, perhaps they sold out?  I also remember that it worked out a lot cheaper than buying all the discs individually as i did.
I too look forward to a Liszt year on Radio 3 in 2011 (yeah, dream on...)
More later when I'm at home!