After the treacherous leaps, there is the small cadenza, starting on a not so low A, and then rushing up in doubles, well, that's known, having read the (not so good) Lenau poem on whitch Liszt based the piece, I think that the not so low A should reach the bottom of Hell, should one go for the ultimate, right hand crossing over left, hitting the lowest A, or just be a nice guy/girl, and do what he wrote (realising that he himself never did)?

Not terribly convinced about the idea of crossing over with the right, but I always spread up from the lowest octave there. I play the Horowitz version, but I can't remember whether he added this or if I put it in myself.

probabely everyone is tempted to do it, by the way: I only play the 'Liszt'-version, a very good alternative to Horowitz's, and this is the only place I dare to try to 'improve', that's such a big word, on the original, a single note, but to me quite a substantial one, there are so many who double octaves, or break chords, or play 'rubato' where it's not supposed to be done, just in this instance I wonder whether it would contribute to the musical/litteral content, and with the right hand, that's the one that has the time to do it, not the left!

The right hand has time? Isn't it finishing the preceeding arpeggio? How the hell are you going to get down there without a massive gap? Just spread the left hand. It has much more time available.

the r.h. has time, really, the only thing would be hitting the A an octave lower, increasing the effect of touching inferno's grounds, and go on with daily business, the swandive to that A is very histrionic, I know, but maybe in it's place?

But why leave a gap for that big jump when the left hand is free and has all the time in the world? I don't think it's much of plunge into the pits of hell if you pause mid-flow, while the right hand stretches across. Also, there's no need to be in a hurry after the low note. Is that what you were thinking of when you suggested the left doesn't have time? If you spread too quickly, you can end up removing the point of doing the low note, because it doesn't have a chance to ring out. Nyiregyhazi used these absolutely all over the place, with truly frightening results. The impact is at it's greatest when you linger momentarily on the fifth finger, rather than when you feel there's a hurry to get up the rest of the spread.

wait, the l.h. is playing it's A, the r.h. is adding the octave below with a crossover, I was so involved correcting wrong answers to old threads that I even didn't know existed, pff, just came out of those dark waters, ready to jump in fresh now though, you play this terrific piece?
Floris.

Yeah, you can just spread it all in the left. If I did a blocked chord, I'd play the lower octave in the left and do the two upper notes in the right. It's more solid that way. However, I prefer the sound of the low A alone, to start the ball rolling. It's sounds truly terrifying, when you get deep into it. Pletnev does it here (not as demonically as I'd like in that particular extra note, but it's a great performance).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j161fzjOzyg&feature=related

Isn't that Busoni's version? I play the boring not so low A but I don't roll the chord so I can give it a hearty smack.

Do you mean the Horowitz one in general or the extra A? Lots of his changes are from Busoni. But I had a check and the low A isn't in either. In addition to the Busoni bits, Horowitz has his own coda and an igengious way of doubling the explosive repeated left hand triplets in both hands, where the right hand has the huge arpeggios (without any particularly noticable break in the arpeggio).

If by ingenious, you mean he stopped playing the arpeggio for the triplets and resumed immediately after adding all kinds of notes that he may not intended, then yes I guess it was. It's coming back to me now. And yes he did add a bit here and there, you are correct.

Oops, sorry, I was speaking in general, not about the low A.