Liszt, Franz (1811-1886)

[Joseph K]

This is one of my favourite pieces, ever -

Some of its harmonies are so impressionistic, it's amazing to think it was written in the 1830s! While my knowledge of harmony is not that great, I'd say there are passages that would elude a roman numeral analysis... for me, this has the all the emotional impact and grandeur of, say, Wagner (think the overwhelming 'Liebestod') along with a the dreamy, colourful harmonies tinged with wistfulness of say, Ravel. If you're looking for contrapuntal and voice-leading depth of Chopin or Brahms, it's not the best place to look, but on its own terms, namely, the strength of its harmonic and lyrical ideas, as well as the novel harmonic overall structure (which spells out an augmented triad) it's profound. (But I need to add: the piece really needs to take twenty minutes! Many pianists ruin it by playing it too fast!)

So like I say, what I love about Liszt at his best are his great harmonies, melodies and interesting forms. I have Christus sitting by my CD player, waiting for a spin, I'll report back about it, soon.

[ahinton]

This is one of my favourite pieces, ever -

Some of its harmonies are so impressionistic, it's amazing to think it was written in the 1830s! While my knowledge of harmony is not that great, I'd say there are passages that would elude a roman numeral analysis... for me, this has the all the emotional impact and grandeur of, say, Wagner (think the overwhelming 'Liebestod') along with a the dreamy, colourful harmonies tinged with wistfulness of say, Ravel. If you're looking for contrapuntal and voice-leading depth of Chopin or Brahms, it's not the best place to look, but on its own terms, namely, the strength of its harmonic and lyrical ideas, as well as the novel harmonic overall structure (which spells out an augmented triad) it's profound. (But I need to add: the piece really needs to take twenty minutes! Many pianists ruin it by playing it too fast!)

So like I say, what I love about Liszt at his best are his great harmonies, melodies and interesting forms. I have Christus sitting by my CD player, waiting for a spin, I'll report back about it, soon.

c.1847, actually, but still a most wonerful work!

[teamsaint]

This is one of my favourite pieces, ever -

Some of its harmonies are so impressionistic, it's amazing to think it was written in the 1830s! While my knowledge of harmony is not that great, I'd say there are passages that would elude a roman numeral analysis... for me, this has the all the emotional impact and grandeur of, say, Wagner (think the overwhelming 'Liebestod') along with a the dreamy, colourful harmonies tinged with wistfulness of say, Ravel. If you're looking for contrapuntal and voice-leading depth of Chopin or Brahms, it's not the best place to look, but on its own terms, namely, the strength of its harmonic and lyrical ideas, as well as the novel harmonic overall structure (which spells out an augmented triad) it's profound. (But I need to add: the piece really needs to take twenty minutes! Many pianists ruin it by playing it too fast!)

So like I say, what I love about Liszt at his best are his great harmonies, melodies and interesting forms. I have Christus sitting by my CD player, waiting for a spin, I'll report back about it, soon.

Would love to hear Christus performed live.

[Richard Tarleton]

This is one of my favourite pieces, ever -

Some of its harmonies are so impressionistic, it's amazing to think it was written in the 1830s! While my knowledge of harmony is not that great, I'd say there are passages that would elude a roman numeral analysis... for me, this has the all the emotional impact and grandeur of, say, Wagner (think the overwhelming 'Liebestod') along with a the dreamy, colourful harmonies tinged with wistfulness of say, Ravel. If you're looking for contrapuntal and voice-leading depth of Chopin or Brahms, it's not the best place to look, but on its own terms, namely, the strength of its harmonic and lyrical ideas, as well as the novel harmonic overall structure (which spells out an augmented triad) it's profound. (But I need to add: the piece really needs to take twenty minutes! Many pianists ruin it by playing it too fast!)

So like I say, what I love about Liszt at his best are his great harmonies, melodies and interesting forms. I have Christus sitting by my CD player, waiting for a spin, I'll report back about it, soon.

Agreed, Joseph, I love it too. I was lucky enough to hear Brendel play it in a recital in the RFH around 1974, and still have the original Brendel LP containing it, Weinen Klagen Sorgen Sagen, Pensées des Morts and the Fantasy and Fugue on BACH - four of Liszt's greatest piano works and one of the finest recitals in my collection. And you're right, some pianists rush it, though the version you post is the teensiest bit too slow, I'd say

Brendel, one of the great Lisztians, rather went off the piece in later years - in his book of conversations "The Veil of Order" (2001) he says "I am no longer so convinced by the pentatonic bliss of Bénédiction de Dieu....- at least not by the recapitulation, which consists of nothing but harp arpeggios. Liszt sometimes had a fatal predilection for the sound of harps" .

Ahinton is of course correct (the YouTube date is also wrong), Liszt composed it at Woronice, Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein's country estate near Kiev where he went to stay in 1847 when he ended his career as a travelling virtuoso, and before he settled in Weimar.

[Joseph K]

Brendel, one of the great Lisztians, rather went off the piece in later years - in his book of conversations "The Veil of Order" (2001) he says "I am no longer so convinced by the pentatonic bliss of Bénédiction de Dieu....- at least not by the recapitulation, which consists of nothing but harp arpeggios. Liszt sometimes had a fatal predilection for the sound of harps"

Brendel would say that though, he takes the piece at an absurd tempo, which totally ruins its affect. :p

I just finished the 'Christmas Oratorio' section of Christus. Nice enough, but not anything too much to write home about. I suppose it does make one feel a bit Christmassy.

[Richard Tarleton]

Brendel would say that though, he takes the piece at an absurd tempo, which totally ruins its affect.]

At the quicker end of the spectrum I grant you, but it's very easy for this piece to tip over into self-indulgence. There are some very posy performances on You Tube. I think Brendel nails it. In his essay "Coping with Pianos" he mentions how "a piano with a singing tone, a tender treble, gentle bass, and a harp-like, whispering soft pedal will bring Liszt's B de D to life...." and singles out the opening as a test piece for the voicing of the soft pedal....

I'd hesitate to use the words "absurd" and "ruin" in the same sentence as "Brendel" . Better not ask you what you think of Leslie Howard's rendition in his complete Liszt - faster than Brendel, but again it works. So much depends on the piano, and the pianist - timings alone not the whole answer. I find my Stephen Osborne version in his complete Harmonies Poétiques (17.10) a tiny bit dull - Brendel may be faster, but he seems slower, gets to the heart of it.

But we're lucky there's so much to choose from.

[Stanfordian]

Brendel would say that though, he takes the piece at an absurd tempo, which totally ruins its affect. :p

I just finished the 'Christmas Oratorio' section of Christus. Nice enough, but not anything too much to write home about. I suppose it does make one feel a bit Christmassy.

I agree that Christus it not Liszt at his most inspired. The Faust and Dante symphonies are very different propositions! Heard live in concert they made a tremendous impression on me!

[BBMmk2]

One of my favourite Liszt works has to be Hunnenschlacht! What a great atmospheric piece!

[Joseph K]

Just listened to the Faust Symphony for the first time in a while (Orchestra of the Ferenc Liszt Academy under András Ligeti). I would say the first movement is the one I like least and if I had to name a favourite, it would be the second movement, Gretchen. People who know this work will know that around the half way point of this movement begins the most transcendentally exquisite passage of anywhere in Liszt... its harmonies are such that it leaves one breathless, truly spine-tingling! Elsewhere in the symphony, namely movements one and three, contain passages of great swagger almost reminiscent to this listener of Miles Davis... there are also funky rhythms that have a kind of strut about them.

I still am aware of certain limitations of Liszt's, mainly in the first movement. TBH, I feel I ought to listen to some Wagner and Berlioz to clarify to myself various stylistic differences... Funnily enough, for my birthday I received a book on neo-Riemannian theory, 'Audacious Euphony' it's called... I haven't got far in yet, but all you need to know is that it deals with a way of thinking about music specific to the kind of chromatic harmony one encounters in the 19th century. Liszt's harmonies, indeed, his music, still has a modernistic sense of joy of discovery... he is truly original! Liszt represents to me a beginning of a kind of ecstatic, colourful transcendental, intoxicating approach to harmony that finds its fruition and development in people like Scriabin, Messiaen and Spectral composers.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Faust Symphony is the only orchestral work by Liszt for which I have complete admiration - often I find where he creates a fascinating harmonic sequence, the melodic, textural and (especially) rhythmic material is often banal; only in Faust and the B minor Sonata does he manage to get everything astonishing over an extended duration. (I say "only"!!!)

Riemann is proving more useful for analysis of late 19th Century chromatic harmony/tonality than Schenker (who is invaluable for so much else, of course) - I've read very useful and insightful analyses of Bruckner's symphonies that use Riemann's ideas as a starting point. I've not heard of Audacious Euphony (and I already adore the title) but I've added it to my "basket" - I seem to remember I have a birthday sometime next year.

[Joseph K]

Over on the 'now listening' thread I mentioned I was listening to the first book of Liszt's Annees de Pelerinage. It's very nice, very nice indeed, but it did give the impression of a composer whose powers were not yet fully developed; parts of it adumbrate pieces whose expressive power is more concentrated and potent - parts of Vallee d'Obermann foreshadow Andante lagrimoso, and the thin, eerie textures of La Mal du pays anticipate those of Nuages Gris. For whatever reason (because I think the composition of the first two books overlapped, rather than being chronologically separate) the second book, which I am currently listening to, seems stronger than the first. Now, trying to think of the third book, it is apparent about the expressive development of Liszt's music is that it branches out in extremities - the nature of these pieces where the classical idea of contrast and balance is dispensed with, and each composition takes its general expressive-type and really pushes it. So the melancholy of book 3 is fiercer and more tragic than that of earlier pieces, and the spiritual, ecstatic side is yet more so. I am reminded, in thinking of the nature of Liszt's inspired ideas and how they seem to just have appeared ex nihilo is some cases, of Stravinsky and specifically, the Rite, about which I remember reading that his ideas seem to have arrived fully formed - that, rather than 'organically' developing a single idea, instead a plethora of ideas with very distinctive quiddities are stated, juxtaposed, repeated and rearranged, with special attention on rhythmic process (actually I don't know that much about the Rite at all...) where I see distant similarities with Liszt probably has something to do with the improvisational aspects of Liszt and the use of exotic modes, symmetrical scales etc.

Just, curious, ferney, if Faust and the B minor sonata are the only pieces where he manages to get things astonishing over an extended duration, what pieces of a shorter duration do you think he manages this, that you know?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Just, curious, ferney, if Faust and the B minor sonata are the only pieces where he manages to get things astonishing over an extended duration, what pieces of a shorter duration do you think he manages this, that you know?

Well, just because I rather like them, most of the pieces in the three Annees (I'm very fond indeed of Jando's NAXOS recordings) - and some of the later works such as the chamber version of La Lugubre Gondola, the Bagatelle sans Tonalite, Am Grabe Richard Wagners, etc.

[Jonathan]

Going back to Benediction briefly, I have a recording by Kun Woo Paik who takes about 21 minutes and it is wonderful. I find performances which are less than about 18 minutes too rushed - when I played this in concert at university over 20 years ago, I took about 20 minutes. Apparently, Cortot used to play it in 11 minutes, What a mess that must've been! I'm very fond of both symphonies, another recently acquired disc is of Tausig's solo piano version of the Faust - that is amazing.

[Joseph K]

Going back to Benediction briefly, I have a recording by Kun Woo Paik who takes about 21 minutes and it is wonderful. I find performances which are less than about 18 minutes too rushed - when I played this in concert at university over 20 years ago, I took about 20 minutes. Apparently, Cortot used to play it in 11 minutes, What a mess that must've been!

I agree! Kun Woo Paik is the performer I believe in the video I originally posted, though he isn't credited.

[silvestrione]

At the quicker end of the spectrum I grant you, but it's very easy for this piece to tip over into self-indulgence. There are some very posy performances on You Tube. I think Brendel nails it. In his essay "Coping with Pianos" he mentions how "a piano with a singing tone, a tender treble, gentle bass, and a harp-like, whispering soft pedal will bring Liszt's B de D to life...." and singles out the opening as a test piece for the voicing of the soft pedal....

I'd hesitate to use the words "absurd" and "ruin" in the same sentence as "Brendel" . Better not ask you what you think of Leslie Howard's rendition in his complete Liszt - faster than Brendel, but again it works. So much depends on the piano, and the pianist - timings alone not the whole answer. I find my Stephen Osborne version in his complete Harmonies Poétiques (17.10) a tiny bit dull - Brendel may be faster, but he seems slower, gets to the heart of it.

But we're lucky there's so much to choose from.

I so much agree here. I think Brendel finds the perfect tempo. To my ears anything slower tends towards the self-indulgent (Arrau for example). There are two great recordings from Brendel, one early one (on Vox?) just as good, and chosen by Bryce Morrison in a recent survey in...was it the Gramophone? Or International Pianist perhaps. I don't keep my magazines!

In both Brendel manages an extraordinary 'speaking' tone and manner in the central section and coda, beautifully caught by the Philips engineers. As for the outer sections...as he himself says in his note, eventually there's a 'whole orchestra of arpeggiating harps'...