This young Finnish prize-winning pianist makes his recorded début with a challenging and enterprising a programme of Schubert transcriptions by Liszt, Godowsky, Prokofiev and Busoni.
Schubert takes less kindly to arrangement than most; his profound simplicity is easily compromised. True Schubertians might well have winced at what Godowsky does to 'Morgengruss' from Die schöne Müllerin, where innocence is turned into experience and a tropical efflorescence. Yet if to some this is sacriligeous, others, will celebrate an act of engaging decadence. Liszt, for all his theatricality, is much more an ardent devotee than mischief-maker, often memorably true to both his own and Schubert's sharply opposed natures, whereas Prokofiev and Busoni's offerings are disappointingly more deferential than genuinely re-creative.
Siirala's performances are masterly and warmly sympathetic throughout, and never more so than in Godowsky's horrendously demanding Passacaglia on Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.
Even Horowitz balked before this challenge, complaining that you needed six hands to encompass such fearsome difficulties.