Prom 54: Wednesday 24th August at 10.00 p.m. (Liszt's piano music)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

A Late Night Prom celebrating the keyboard genius of anniversary composer, Franz Liszt. French pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin plays a selection of virtuosic works spanning the whole of the composer-pianist's imaginative and emotional world.

Liszt: Legend No. 2 (St. Francis of Paola Walking on the Water)
Liszt: Fantasia and Fugue on B-A-C-H
Liszt: Bénédiction de Dieu dans las solitude
Liszt: Venezia e Napoli

Marc-André Hamelin (piano).

[Rolmill]

So did anyone go to this concert? Sounded pretty good on the radio, but I wasn't able to concentrate fully (too many kids!) - my general impression was that there was some impressive technique on show, but the most enthralling playing tended to be in the less overtly virtuosic passages. I would be interested to hear reactions from attendees, though.

[Kuhlau]

I was there Rolmill. It was absolutely tremendous, in fact both concerts from that evening form the highlight of my musical year thus far. The stage was bathed in a cool blue glow, the audience attentive, nay, rapt by what they heard. Nothing but the piano played in as close as you'll ever get to complete silence - enthralling indeed! Far from just a showy demonstration of virtuosity, Hamelin communicated with such poetry and sensitivity, I felt incredibly touched and affected by the whole hours playing. You know it's a good one when you can't sleep afterwards! :)

[Ferretfancy]

I touched on this one on the thread for the previous Prom. I'll say again, I don't think I will ever hear such astounding playing for a long time, but I do have problems with the music itself. Nonetheless, nobody can make a better case for it than Hamelin, it was scarcely credible that human hands could encompass the complexity of it with such style.
There were two encores, No. 1 was the first of Liszt's Concert Studies, Waldesrauschen, but I did not recognise the second,and on checking the broadcast later I find that they finished the broadcast before he returned to play it. It would be nice to know.

[Rivington]

Second encore was by Sabaneyev - Prelude, Op 10 No. 5 (3 mins)

I have never known the audience so quiet. One could hear a pin drop in the hall. Fascinating to watch his hands in the "showy" pieces. The quiet works were simply sublime. Magical evening.

By contrast I overheard a couple of ladies talking about the earlier concert's audience, saying that they sounded as if they should all have been given an ECG & that it sounded like a Sanitorium in the Hall!

[cavatina]

I saw it from the front row, and had a perfect view of his hands...the way the bluish-white light illuminated them as they hovered in the darkness was absolutely unforgettable. I found the whole experience so searingly intense, I literally had to brace my back against the side rail and hang onto the rope to keep from accidentally toppling down the stairs.

Back when people were more sensitive, fainting with emotion at Liszt concerts wasn't unusual at all...here's what Heine had to say about it:

When formerly I heard of the fainting spells which broke out in Germany and specially in Berlin, when Liszt showed himself there, I shrugged my sholders pityingly and thought: quiet sabbatarian Germany does not wish to lose the opportunity of getting the little necessary exercise permitted it... In their case, thought I, it is a matter of the spectacle for the spectacle's sake...Thus I explained this Lisztomania, and looked on it as a sign of the politically unfree conditions existing beyond the Rhine. Yet I was mistaken, after all, and I did not notice it until last week, at the Italian Opera House, where Liszt gave his first concert...This was truly no Germanically sentimental, sentimentalizing Berlinate audience, before which Liszt played, quite alone, or rather, accompanied solely by his genius. And yet, how convulsively his mere appearance affected them! How boisterous was the applause which rang to meet him!...What acclaim it was! A veritable insanity, one unheard of in the annals of furore!

Hearing this concert finally made me understand why.

[Quarky]

Must be a candidate for the best (non-symphonic) Prom of the season.

[Rolmill]

Interesting comments. I possess (and much admire) several of Hamelin's CDs, but had wondered whether he could replicate such dazzling playing live - sounds like he could and did. I did toy with the idea of coming up to this one, but decided I would regret such a late night in the middle of a busy week at work; I wish I hadn't been so cautious. Ah well...

[Ferretfancy]

Rivington

Thanks for identifying Hamelin's second encore, now I can change from "Encore unknown " in the summary I keep on my iMac.
The two ladies that you mention were perhaps a mite over sensitive about the audience at the earlier concert. There were a few sea lions in the stalls, as usual, but it really wasn't too bad from where I stood.

[Serial_Apologist]

I saw it from the front row, and had a perfect view of his hands...the way the bluish-white light illuminated them as they hovered in the darkness was absolutely unforgettable. I found the whole experience so searingly intense, I literally had to brace my back against the side rail and hang onto the rope to keep from accidentally toppling down the stairs.

Back when people were more sensitive, fainting with emotion at Liszt concerts wasn't unusual at all...here's what Heine had to say about it:


Hearing this concert finally made me understand why.

I had completely forgotten about Liszt's alleged effects upon audiences when giving one of his performances. I trust people will bear with a lengthy quote from Colin Wilson's 1964 book "On Music"; back then Mr Wilson could write well, on occasion:

"There is an extraordinary intensity about so many of those late romantic composers, a pure distillation of some unique spirit. To gather what I mean, in the crudest sense, one has only to listen to any good recording of Liszt opera transcriptions for piano, or better still, to the Second Hugarian Rhapsody as played by Horowitz at his twenty-fifth anniversary concert in Carnegie Hall. One sniffs at the mention of this Rhapsody; even a musical ignoramus could hum most of it from memory. And yet as Horowitz strikes those thunderous opening chords one is suddenly seated in some bare concert hall of the 1860s, with the master himself at the piano - that powerful and ugly face that is so striking that most writers describe it as handsome, the immense flowing mane, the large bony hands, the total composure. What a man that was! What a way to live! This man was the nineteenth century counterpart of the pop idol of today, and his audiences sometimes became as hysterical as any teen-ager doting on Elvis Presley. But will our children of the twenty first century know what the 1950s saw in Frank Sinatra, Johnny Ray? Will they, supposing the opportunity is offered them, be able to distinguish between records of the 'idols' and of the hundred or so who never quite make the top twenty? Yet when we listen to Liszt well played, it is still there, like some perfume preserved in an airtight bottle. There is no loss of impact whatever. We hear that Liszt made a transcription of the 'Liebestod' from Tristan and Isolde and we smile; it might have done for provincial audiences of the 1880s, who never had a chance to hear a real orchestra; but most of us can turn on the complete Tristan in the sitting-room, probably in stereo. Then we play Brendel's recording of the transcribed 'Liebestod', and the smile vanishes. It is incredible that the piano can do so much; not only does it lose nothing, it seems to gain something; Wagner is magnificent, but he does sound a little thick sometimes; even Flagstad gasps like an exhausted swimmer as the waves close over her voice. In the piano version, all is clarity and brilliance; and yet the piano can sound like an orchestra as those waves of sound burst at the end. (Brendel is sensible enough to see that it needs to be taken slightly more slowly than in the orchestral version, giving the breaking waves a sense of inevitability, stateliness). It is unbelievable, yet it works. The same is true of the Norma transcription. I imagine that Liszt would begin his concerts with things like the Second Rhapsody, to stagger his audience with what can be done with the piano; he is like a great actor who can play anything from Othello to Sir Andrews Aguecheck, l'Aiglon to Cyrano. There would follow the tougher fare - Mozart or Beethoven, perhaps Schumann - and then into the barnstorming stuff. These opera transcriptions are the true ancestors of the 'pop classics' of the forties - the 'Warsaw' Concerto, the Cornish Rhapsody, the Glass Mountain: they are melodious and dramatic, and require a minimum of musical concentration. There is a tradition that Liszt used to choose the climactic moment to swoon over the keyboard. If there is any truth in this - and one hopes there is - then I doubt whether he chose the moment; the swoons were probably genuine. Liszt was sensitive to the emotions of his audience; he saw himself as they saw him. And what did they see? A giant who had challenged his rival Thalberg to battle on the concert platform and carried the victory effortlessly; who had run away with one of the most beautiful women in Europe, a married woman with three children (and gave her two more, one of whom became Wagner's wife); who was universally known for his amours, and yet was persona grata with the Church; whose tours of Europe were (to quote Ralph Hill) an orgy of hero-worship; who was a national hero in his own country; who was univerally known for his generosity towards other musicians.... What seems most amazing in retrospect is how Liszt managed to carry such a load of adoration, of non-stop frenzy, and still remain a decent, generous, and in some respects even a modest man. For all his theatricality, there was a touch of the saint in Liszt's composition. And this was the man who now sat before his dazzled audience and played them music in a way that seemed to give it an immense, religious kind of significance. And as Norma's 'Qual cor tradisti' or Isolde's 'Mild und leise' rose to its climax, some of those impressionable young ladies, who had left their half-finished George Sand novels at home, no doubt felt that such a moment would never recur in their lifetimes. The emotional pressure in the room must have been strong enough to stifle a lizard".

With apologies for any typos I may have missed...

[cavatina]

S-A: Thanks for that; a very interesting read!

[Serial_Apologist]

S-A: Thanks for that; a very interesting read!

[bluestateprommer]

I possess (and much admire) several of Hamelin's CDs, but had wondered whether he could replicate such dazzling playing live - sounds like he could and did.

Having heard M-A.H. live in recital and with a concerto, I can certainly attest his ability to play just about anything one can throw in front of him live, seemingly without breaking a sweat. I'll confess that the first several works sounded borderline piano-bash-fest, but I wonder if that's Liszt's original writing rather than Hamelin. I agree with the other poster that the quieter moments were perhaps even more impressive. Sorry that the 2nd encore got truncated from the radio broadcast/iPlayer.