Franz Liszt (1811-86): 8-12/5/17

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For all Liszt's immeasurable importance in the History of Music, and acknowledging the remarkable harmonic innovations in his Music ... there's so little of it that I actually enjoy hearing. The Symphonic Poems played in today's edition of CotW demonstrate what I find his least appealing: "samey" structural and instrumental features, repetitive rhythms, unappealing melodies - and a lot of noise to cover up the Musical deficiencies. There are some works by this composer that I greatly admire (the B minor Sonata, the Faust Symphony, the pieces in the Anees de Pelirinage, the shorter late pieces) - but what was played today seemed like a pale but noisy shadow of what those works achieved.

Apparently this week's programmes are going to be devoted to the 13 Symphonic Poems. I shall listen in hope, but I think I'm going to have a painful five hours ahead of me.

[Bryn]

For all Liszt's immeasurable importance in the History of Music, and acknowledging the remarkable harmonic innovations in his Music ... there's so little of it that I actually enjoy hearing. The Symphonic Poems played in today's edition of CotW demonstrate what I find his least appealing: "samey" structural and instrumental features, repetitive rhythms, unappealing melodies - and a lot of noise to cover up the Musical deficiencies. There are some works by this composer that I greatly admire (the B minor Sonata, the Faust Symphony, the pieces in the Anees de Pelirinage, the shorter late pieces) - but what was played today seemed like a pale but noisy shadow of what those works achieved.

Apparently this week's programmes are going to be devoted to the 13 Symphonic Poems. I shall listen in hope, but I think I'm going to have a painful five hours ahead of me.

It's a repeat run of programmes anyway.

[BBMmk2]

I'm quite a fan of Liszt's music but yes, especially with his symphonic poems, I find as few rather monotonous going! Example, The ideals, etc.

[Barbirollians]

I'm quite a fan of Liszt's music but yes, especially with his symphonic poems, I find as few rather monotonous going! Example, The ideals, etc.

I tend not to agree certainly where Haitink's recordings are concerned of these pieces.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm quite a fan of Liszt's music but yes, especially with his symphonic poems, I find as few rather monotonous going! Example, The ideals, etc.

I always think Liszt to be a composer with many good cards in his mental pack, but who too often overplayed them. His best ones were picked up off the floor by the many followers, from Franck via Rimsky-Korsakov to Busoni, who, imo, played them better. The late stuff's harmonically interesting but, for me, thin. So this is a good opportunity to... reinforce my existing prejudices, in all probability.

[Jonathan]

Try the Martin Haselbock recordings on various labels - they are a revelation with the orchestral music on period instruments and with speedier tempi. There are 8 cds so far, spread across 3 different labels.

[greenilex]

Do any recordings of Liszt himself exist, or is that a historical impossibility?

[Richard Tarleton]

Do any recordings of Liszt himself exist, or is that a historical impossibility?

https://Liszt would have been deligh...d in Bayreuth.

Liszt played in public for the last time on July 19, 1886, shortly before his death. This was in the Luxembourg Casino. From there he set out for Bayreuth, where he died.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There was the Phonoautograph invented by de Martinville in 1860, which could have recorded Liszt's playing; but that was intended to record sound and transcribe these onto a visual graph, not play them back - so we could have seen what his playing sounded like, but not have heard it!

The youTube video attempts to "play" such an early recording: not so much Liszt as a very torpid Flight of a Bumblebee!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vqvq-f-UtU

[BBMmk2]

I do rather like Hunnenschlatt. Very atmospheric!

Ben Grovesnor, according to The Guardian, recently gave a very virtuosic performance of Liszt's PC 1 at la Scala.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Try the Martin Haselbock recordings on various labels - they are a revelation with the orchestral music on period instruments and with speedier tempi. There are 8 cds so far, spread across 3 different labels.

I'd certainly be interested in hearing such performances, Jonathan (especially of the Faust Symphony, which I see is one of the works included). But, having heard the Saint-Saens transcription of Orpheus in today's programme, I rather feel that the instrumental timbres and orchestral balances aren't the main problems I have with the Symphonic Poems

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liszt-Symphony-Orchester-Wiener-Akademie/dp/B01MQYMUWD

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liszt-Symphonic-Poems-Sound-Weimar/dp/B00A17RXE8

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sound-Weimar-Schubert-Liszt/dp/B012PYQOGM

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liszt-Hungarian-Rhapsodies-Haselbock-Orchester/dp/B00DEROPEI

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I shall listen in hope, but I think I'm going to have a painful five hours ahead of me.

The "hope" was unfulfilled, but the "pain" wasn't quite as excruciating as I'd anticipated. Lots of passagework that I found tedious, the occasional fascinating melodic idea, which was then repeated over and over again until the fascination evaporated ... It's as if Liszt only had his interesting ideas in rations: if there was an unusual harmonic feature, the thematic, rhythmic, and textural material was incredibly lacklustre ... and so it rotated: potentially interesting melodies set to predictable harmony and repetitive banal rhythms ... ... ...

No - I first started lisztening in 1974, and the few works of his that I admire remain high in my enthusiasm; for the rest, the same old flaws get more obvious every time I encounter them. Time to acknowledge that the huge majority of his stuff just isn't for me.

[Serial_Apologist]

The "hope" was unfulfilled, but the "pain" wasn't quite as excruciating as I'd anticipated. Lots of passagework that I found tedious, the occasional fascinating melodic idea, which was then repeated over and over again until the fascination evaporated ... It's as if Liszt only had his interesting ideas in rations: if there was an unusual harmonic feature, the thematic, rhythmic, and textural material was incredibly lacklustre ... and so it rotated: potentially interesting melodies set to predictable harmony and repetitive banal rhythms ... ... ...

No - I first started lisztening in 1974, and the few works of his that I admire remain high in my enthusiasm; for the rest, the same old flaws get more obvious every time I encounter them. Time to acknowledge that the huge majority of his stuff just isn't for me.

I feel the same way. I think it was Gerald Abrahams who described Liszt's variational technique, applied repetitively ad nauseam, as "wallpaper form"; as I said earlier, it seems to have been other later composers who found something positive to draw from his cyclical methods, viz. Debussy's String Quartet, Schoenberg's "Verklasrte Nacht", String Quartet No 1 and Chamber Symphony No 1; others from his expansion of pianistic techniques; and still others from his sense of orchestral colour and harmonic adventurousness.

[Richard Tarleton]

Several thought-provoking essays on Liszt in Alfred Brendel's "Music, Sense and Nonsense". e.g. his essay on the B Minor sonata, which he regards as the exception to the rule that Liszt was at his best as a miniaturist.

For me, Liszt is the master of the shorter format, the creator of the religiously inspired piano piece, the magical transformer and unchallenged orchestrator of piano sound, the generous musical poet, visionary and revolutionary. Pieces the size of 'Vallée d'Obermann', 'Funerailles' or the Variations on Bach's 'Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen' show his command of an often innovatory idiom. His musical imagination is nourished by a large variety of intellectual and emotional food, literature and the arts, religion and nature, personalities and ideas, the political struggle for freedom and an awareness of death all contribute to it. The B Minor Sonata, on the other hand, the most original, powerful and intelligent sonata composed after Beethoven and Schubert, is a work of absolute music, and it exemplifies total control of large form. Its blend of deliberation and white heat, unique in Liszt's output, remains all the more astonishing as it was achieved in the face of a most demanding task:a one-movement sonata of half-an-hour's duration.

What, in comparison with Liszt's 'Faust' symphony, becomes immediately evident is that none of the themes is a disappointment. ......

A devoted Lisztophile, I've never spent much time on the orchestral works apart from the works for piano and orchestra (and let's not start on the choral works), but find his solo piano works their own reward. I enjoy some of the tone poems, but would not go out of my way to listen to them.... An interesting week nonetheless, as I hadn't heard them all...

[Serial_Apologist]

This week's re-examination looks at Liszt from the perspective of his Hungarianness with what transpired to be a highly promising opener.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013hz5