BaL 13.04.13 - Liszt's Piano Concerto no. 2

[Nick Armstrong]

Well, yes ... but let's not leap to the conclusion that somebody doesn't like a composer because of "snobbery". Sometimes people just honestly don't like the stuff s/he writes!

Quite. I'm quite unaware of trends like 'fashionability' etc., and care still less about them. I would have thought it was quite 'trendy' to be into Liszt, but the thought hadn't crossed my mind one way or the other till just now.

[visualnickmos]

Well, yes ... but let's not leap to the conclusion that somebody doesn't like a composer because of "snobbery". Sometimes people just honestly don't like the stuff s/he writes!

That's not quite how I intended to come across - I certainly hope to goodness that I haven't offended anyone on here. That's the last thing I would want to do. I was just trying to make the point that perhaps there is in music, indeed, as in many aspects of the arts - a sort of fear (maybe not the exact word) of admitting to enjoying something for the pure sense of enjoyment itself, and without any need of justification.
Oh - here I go again!

[visualnickmos]

.... Sometimes people just honestly don't like the stuff s/he writes!

As a PS; I go along with that totally.

[Nick Armstrong]

enjoying something for the pure sense of enjoyment itself, and without any need of justification

You wanna see me with Rachmaninov's Third PC...

[Sir Velo]

Couldn't agree more!

Give me plenty of Rachmaninov and Medtner! And Chopin! And - while we're at it - Albéniz

All those composers sit happily on my shelves - alongside dear old Ferenc.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That's not quite how I intended to come across - I certainly hope to goodness that I haven't offended anyone on here.

I thought not from all your previous posts, visnik - and I don't think you did. I was just adding the corollary that I thought was implied but not stated in your post.

I was just trying to make the point that perhaps there is in music, indeed, as in many aspects of the arts - a sort of fear (maybe not the exact word) of admitting to enjoying something for the pure sense of enjoyment itself, and without any need of justification.

As a wise man once said, "I go along with that totally".

[Richard Tarleton]

I find Liszt a fascinating figure - a remarkable life. He has been ill-served by his biographers - a hatchet job by Ernest Newman ("The Man Liszt", New York, 1935) - a book written, in the words of his more recent biopgrapher Eleanor Perényi, "out of uncontrollable hatred for its subject" - odd, considering everything he did for Newman's beloved Wagner, and a friendly but wildly inaccurate biog by Sacheverell Sitwell ("Liszt", London 1934) in which "it is truly astonishing to find so many mistakes in a book long looked on as the standard biography in English" (Perényi). I read both long before coming across Perényi, whose book is excellent as far as it goes but she chooses to stop in 1861 and does not cover Liszt's later years in Rome, being more interested in Liszt's place in the history of Romanticism. Her book in turn was the object of a hatchet job by Robert Craft in the New York Review of Books, to which this was her reply.

Albéniz

- lots of Albeniz here, though - as with Chopin - only his solo piano works. Several of his pieces famously transcribed for guitar

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

is there something we might be told; first Howard Goodall does a job on Liszt on the telly, and then there is a BaL on Lizst ...confess i was not anticipating this with any pleasure but did enjoy Mr De Souza's way with it

i concluded that it was definitely a piece to hear in one go and live, and then revel in the insouciant variability of it and the bravura, thrilling in a hall eh? .... but i was not going to score any mp3's or cd any time soon

[HighlandDougie]

I find Liszt a fascinating figure

I had always liked some of the piano music but on his orchestral music I was firmly in the Caliban camp until about 10 years ago when I heard Rozhdestvensky conducting the Faust Symphony at the Edinburgh Festival which was something of a revelation. I now find myself listening to his music often (so much more interesting than my bête-noire, Richard Strauss). This set:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liszt-Symphonic-Poems-Complete-Franz/dp/B00A17RXE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1365940939&sr=1-1&keywords=liszt+haselbock

is well worth anyone's money - and might even win round Caliban. Much enjoyed the BaL, too.

[ostuni]

... He has been ill-served by his biographers ...

Ill-served by those early biographers, certainly. But what about Alan Walker's magnificent works - the 3-volume biography, the 'Liszt: the Man and his Music' compendium, the 'Reflections' essays?

[Richard Tarleton]

Ill-served by those early biographers, certainly. But what about Alan Walker's magnificent works - the 3-volume biography, the 'Liszt: the Man and his Music' compendium, the 'Reflections' essays?

Thank you ostuni - I need to read these. Now I'm retired......

[vinteuil]

: This set:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liszt-Symphonic-Poems-Complete-Franz/dp/B00A17RXE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1365940939&sr=1-1&keywords=liszt+haselbock

is well worth anyone's money - and might even win round Caliban. .

... yes, the Haselbock set is marvellous. It'll take a few more years to get Caliban to appreciate these things. Mind you - he likes Elgar and Shostakovitch, so I have no idea where his æsthetic sensibilities really lie...

[Richard Tarleton]

Mind you - he likes Elgar and Shostakovitch, so I have no idea where his æsthetic sensibilities really lie...

And Rach 3

[Nick Armstrong]

Come one, come all.... It's "Take a Pop at Cali" Day!!

I'll take y'all on!!!

[Richard Tarleton]

Here's Segovia in the Court of Myrtles......(not sure how you feel about transcriptions, but the setting is lovely)

Did Albeniz meet Liszt?