This playlist is really only useful if it shows the most recently played songs right at the top - i.e. it sorts by last played date and time descending. Instead, it seems to inherit the global sort order whenever it is opened, so the first thing that I always have to do is right-click to show the 'last played' column, and then click on it twice to sort descending. Because of this, I rarely use the 'recently played' smart playlist because it isn't immediately useful.

This request could be expanded to include allowing all playlists to remember a different set of display columns and sort order, but that is unnecessary to solve this specific problem.