What liszt should i listen to?
Sunday ~ March 03, 2010
La Campanella
&
Liebestruam
They are both beautiful! I know La Campanella is actually taken from Paganini (so it would have been originally written for violin), not sure about Liebestraum - that could be too. But these are both just gorgeous on piano.
-Etudes Trancendantes.
-Nocturnes , Consolations.
-Mephisto Waltz No. 1.
-Polonaises.
In piano music I would pick the most meaningful and intimate works: 'Annees de pelerinage' (in 3 sections, spanning from 1848 to 1877) and 'Harmonies poetiques et religieuses' (a reflection on death, written in 1833). The most acrobatic effects of his piano mastership show up in the Transcendental Studies after Paganini (1838); the sentimental charge appears heavily (and opinably) in Un Sospiro (1848) and Liebestraum (1850).
Moving to the piano / orchestra production, we have concerts 1 and 2 (curiously, no. 2 precedes no. 1 in chronology), where the richness of invention pours seamlessly into virtuosism, and Totentanz (1849-59 a danse macabre based on the Dies Irae). Orchestra-wise, the best symphonic poems are to me Mazeppa 1840 and Les Preludes (1848). I recommend to avoid the bombastic Faust-symphony, Dante-symphony and Legend of St. Elisabeth.
With a gun at my neck, I'd pick the Transcendental Studies. They are extremely difficult. The first version was composed by a 15 yr. old Liszt (1826); the second one (1837) was a radical rewriting, introducing such instrumental difficulties to make it hardly executable. The last version (1851) was dedicated to his maestro (Czerny) and mitigates the difficulties. As in the case of Chopinâ ™s 24 Studies op.10 and 25, there's an intense musical aura, not only arid technicality; but Chopin referred each study to a specific technical aspect, while Liszt mixes the elements in each study. Ten of the twelve studies bear a title by Liszt himself. The order of tonalities is in triads (tonic - relative minor/major â “ subdominant; e.g. in the case of no. 11 in D flat major, it comes after no.10 in F minor and before no. 12 in B flat minor).
