Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Franz Liszt appreciation thread.

En rêve sound a bit neither here nor there to me! I remember trying one of the Consolations once, a long time ago, and gave up because I found it a bit tedious, but I'm willing to give these miniatures another go. O pourquoi donc seems the most rewarding piece to me. I'd like to have a stab at Un Sospiro one day, in the distant future, and if I ever feel I'm ready, I'll bypass Liszt's Transcendental Etudes entirely and go straight for Lyapunov's!

Really? Explore the Lyapunov if you wish -certainly decent enough music (though I think they often look more interesting on the printed page than they do in performance)- but IMO they have none of the genius of Liszt's etudes.

But you can always save the Liszt for another day!

I haven't read through either of the two sets of Etudes, but from just listening, a couple of the Lyapunov ones stood out including one that I like very much. The Liszt set however, I didn't find memorable from a listener's point of view. I will of course, do a selective read through one day, if ever I feel I am ready.

I consider the best Liszt TE's to be 3, and 9-12. I think that 10-12 especially reach heights rarely matched in the solo piano literature, as far as miniatures go. I'm not sure how familiar you are with them, but I might as well link them anyway. This thread is lacking most of the TE's!

Paysage



Ricordanza



Appassionato



Harmonies Du Soir



Chasse-Neige

You left out the best one.

Listening to some of the Transcendental Etudes again, I'm even more acutely aware of the fact that I don't get it. And I think I now get why I don't get it, and I think I don't get it for the same reason I don't get it when I hear jazz (should I run and duck?). It's the performance aspects of a lot of Liszt that I am talking about. It's the flamboyance, the rhetorical gestures and flourishes which draw attention to themselves and to the performer.

I've been listening to Liszt in the wrong setting. I think I'd get it if I were to listen to him played live, especially by a flamboyant pianist (like Lang Lang? ) I might still not not enjoy what I hear the way I'd enjoy Schumann, Brahms (yes I'm firmly in the Leipzig-Berlin rather than the Weimar camp), Chopin or Schubert, but I think I'd get it.

Incidentally, the one time I remember hearing Liszt played live was thanks to a pianist who got a lot of flak from reviewers for being 'reserved' in his interpretation of Liszt. When I interviewed him, he scoffed at his critics and said he wanted to bring out the 'spiritual' side of the composer and made it a point of putting stuff like the Petrarchan Sonnets (I didn't get those either!) on the programme.

Anyway, I intend to have a fair stab at the first book of the Années. They look rewarding enough. One day in the distant future, I might have a go at some of the more showy and technically demaqnding pieces and maybe then, I'd get it.

That's understandable However I do disagree with a couple of your points - i'm of the belief that in the best of Liszt, if you are listening to the 'rhetorical gestures and flourishes' and feel they are 'drawing attention to themselves and the performer,' you are listening wrong. There is a lot of Liszt where what you describe certainly applies, but I fail to see it in the Trans etudes I listed. They use a virtuosic language like a lot of Liszt - but for a musical rather than athletic purpose. That virtuosic language can be difficult to get used to and probably isn't for everyone, so I understand your analysis.

I don't mean to push too much on you, i'm just curious. What do you think of late Liszt? Say, this piece?



Incidentally, you could play that one.

Regardless, I hope you find joy in learning pieces from the Annees!

[video:youtube]n-wXp939XmU[/video]

This is amazing!

I discovered this work yesterday. Does anyone know about it? I found some information about it, apparently it was composed for the 20th anniversary of Chopin's death.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnjauJquWfw&feature=relmfu

I've heard it twice before - and don't have much time to listen again at the moment. It struck me as a really interesting, if not wholly satisfying work back then. Then again, I never got close to understanding it (I didn't have any notes about the work, and Liszt as always is highly programmatic, symbolic, etc). Certainly a different side to Liszt than the music which he is usually associated with!

Thanks for the link - this is a work I need to revisit.

Thanks, and no, I would not be able to play that one! The technical demands might be modest enough for me, but in order to be able to play it with any degree of conviction, I think I'd need to study more Liszt first. It is musically rather challenging.

Good response.

Today I started to transcendental etude no. 1

such a nice piece Thank you Liszt.

I'd say that Liszt is quite possibly the best pianist to ever live. It's such a horrific shame that he didn't live into the age in which he could have been recorded...

Three more discoveries...

Excelsior! Preludio to the Cantata "The Bells of Strasbourg Cathedral" (Personally, despite the praise by Alan Walker on the piece, the actual Cantata hasn't reached me. However, this prelude is glorious in that Mahlerian, mind-blowing sort of way).



Cantantibus Organis.



Der nächtliche Zug. (The first piece from the Two Episodes from Lenau's Faust - the other being the first Mephisto Waltz. This is one of his better orchestral works, written a little later than most of the tone poems and the symphonies. It employs superior, more imaginative orchestration. As does the Mephisto Waltz No. 1. in its orchestral form).

I won't deny that they're attention drawing, but I like to think of a lot of these short Liszt pieces as being FUN for the audience and performer. Well, for the performer I guess it's not that fun performing if you don't have it 100% solid lol. Liszt is really great to listen to in my opinion, it's hard to grow tired of!

These are perhaps terrible oversimplifications and generalizations that aren't accurate but I think Chopin/Liszt write relatively simple music in the sense that you immediately connect with it. (I guess we can throw a lot of composers into this category) Chopin's I tend to think of as being "pretty", while Liszt's music is grander and often times embodies more emotion (sorry Chopin fans :P).

The reason I say this is when I play Chopin I find myself thinking about how to optimize the "pretty" factor. I think of it as trying to immerse myself in the music, it sounds so nice I want more. With Liszt, I feel like I'm pulled into it, and I feel all of it. Sorry this is terribly vague and possibly makes no sense, but with Liszt I feel like it's really easy to just let go, and do what you feel like is right. His flamboyant and grand passages are very intuitive for some reason.

I've performed the 10th Transcendental Etude a lot of times, and I think while the audience is wowed by the excessive arm movement, the intensity is something everyone can always feel. To throw more useless metaphors out there, Liszt has a certain strong flavor to his music. The spirit is sorta like Rachmaninoff (although Rachmaninoff usually has a lot of other stuff going on underneath the surface whereas Liszt doesn't), but more "focused".

Anyways, you can probably tell by now I'm not much good at this writing/language business, but it's been a while since I've touched any new Liszt, progress has been a bit slow this past year since I have been slacking. I casually learned Chasse neige about a year ago but I forgot how to play it, another really FUN piece, it just feels so good pounding out that melody with so much muscle power.

My favorite Liszt piece is probably the Sonata, I should learn it someday...I love the 2nd Ballade too, it's not that hard technically but it's so mature and absolutely priceless. Hopefully I'll get around to a few more Transcendental Etudes, Mazeppa looks like fun. Currently tied up with Scriabin, looking into killing myself via Medtner, hopefully I live to play some more Liszt

Oh I just remembered, I got a Guiseppe Andaloro CD with some Elegies, the Grosses Konzertsolo and the 4 Mephisto Valses. I think most people aren't aware that there's more than 1 Mephisto Valse, the other 3 are really great though! I like the Grosses Konzertsolo a lot, though I don't think I'd want to learn it for some reason.

Great interview, and simply sublime playing...

I can't stop thinking about Liszt! I think about him and I have the same kind of feelings as when I think about a woman with whom I have been in love. Is this normal? Am I the only one in love with Liszt?!

[video:youtube]P2JDnTmhcbc[/video]

I was playing this one last night, and this music brought to mind direct images of this aforementioned woman, and now Liszt is just as real as her.

I think you win the PC Liszt appreciation award for this post

Now I'm curious... although this isn't Psychology Corner and I am not sure if we discuss such things! Is this a case of sublimation or what? Transferral? Isn't transferral when you fall in love with someone closely associated with the person you are actually in love with? Can you fall in love with a composer who is not actually living? What about Jeremy Denk and his blog entry about Schumann as a living, metaphysical presence in his imagination? It was only the idea of Schumann though... (well yes, I suppose if Denk was seeing the real flesh-and-blood Schumann, that would make for a genuinely troubling blog entry...)

Or is this all about how *cute* Liszt was...

Interesting... Liszt is really cute!