PAOLO RESTANI

16 March 2011

FRANZ LISZT

(1811-1886)

bi-centenary recital

To early 19th century audiences playing solo meant either appearing in private salons or interluding in other people’s concerts. Enter Liszt, the divine 'pianist of the future (Berlioz). He took the instrument out of the drawing room into the concert hall. He played his Érard to 3,000 in La Scala (1837). He invented the 'recital' (1839) - 'a series of [informal] concerts all by myself, affecting the style of Louis XVI and saying cavalierly to the public Le concert, c'est moi!' 'We cannot call to mind any other artist,' reported the London Atheneum, 'who could thus, by his own unassisted power, attract and engage an audience for a couple of hours [...] musicians crowd to listen to him'. The one-man show had arrived.

Klavierstück in F sharp major, S 193 (post-1860) Liszt's catalogue is strewn with fragmentary miniatures. The circumstances of the present albumblatt, edited by José Vianna da Motta in 1928, are unknown. Presumed to date from his 'Abbé' phase, its language is eclectic. Leslie Howard (1991) refers to an 'earlier style, with its fulsome melodic arch and parallel thirds', while yet acknowledging 'many a hint' of later progressiveness. Its F sharp polarity – Liszt's 'benediction' key, Scriabin's 'blue' mode – will be noted.

Ten Transcendental Studies from S 139 (1851 version) Liszt’s studies, Busoni considered (1909), should be ‘put at the head of his pianoforte compositions’. They ‘would place [him] in the rank of the ‘greatest’ pianoforte composers since Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Alkan, Brahms.’ In their pages, he intimated, are to be met ‘the Mephistophelian and the Religious: he who acknowledges God does not value the Devil less'. Establishing modern piano technique, pre-occupying Liszt from ‘childhood to manhood,’ the death of Weber to Queen Victoria's Great Exhibition, unfolding ‘a part of his musical autobiography in public’ (Alan Walker), the twelve Studies of Transcendental Execution dedicated to Carl Czerny exist in three versions. 1826, 1837, 1851: core, complexification, clarification. Each follows the same distinctive key pattern (shared with Kessler's Op 20) of falling fifths, majors (C to D flat) paired with relative minors (A to B flat). The creative and pianistic stages of these texts tell a story of endless selection and metamorphosis, retention, rejection and recasting, the journey of the double-escapement concert-grand from straight-strung wood frame to cross-strung iron, waiting for 1853 and the Bechstein-Blüthner-Steinway power revolution. Maestro Restani's selection omits Nos 5 (Feux follets) and 12 (Chasse-neige).

No 3 Paysage [Landscape] F major, Poco adagio. ‘A calm renunciation of everything worldly [...] a self-contemplation but not quite without passion’ (Busoni). In the ‘agreeable and peaceful’ key, 6/8 pulse likewise, of Classical pastoralism, Paysage inhabits a predominantly una corda terrain - lit by an impassioned fortissimo climax, farewelled by a nightfall of ever-widening void between the registers. No 9 Ricordanza [Remembrance, Souvenir] A flat major, Andantino. ‘A bundle of faded love letters from a somewhat old-fashioned world of sentiment’ (Busoni). ‘Remembering’ surely someone beautiful (Marie d’Agoult, her ‘profusion of blond hair […] like a shower of gold’?), the 1851 version combines the essential outline of the original 1826 seed pages with an introduction and coda drawing on the 1837 re-working, limpid displays of flowering cadenza and caprice smokily infusing the vista. No 6 Vision G minor/major, Lento ‘The funeral of the first Napoleon advancing with solemn and imperial pomp’ (Busoni), resonating to echoes of Dies Irae and columns of basaltic sound. No 7 Eroica E flat major, Allegro. A Valhalla march. No 8 Wilde Jagd [Wild Hunt] C minor, Presto furioso.‘Wilde Jagd displays the strongest orchestral colouring - and there is in it, as in the Dante Sonata, a foundation for the symphonic poem as it was [to be] realized in César Franck’s Chasseur Maudit’ (Busoni). Harking back to the kunstballade tradition of Gottfried Bürger’s Der wilde Jäger (1775/78), its sub-text points to the The Wild Hunt of the north peoples. Phantom horsemen, creatures of the night, demons of ill-omen racing the sky. No 4 Mazeppa D minor, Allegro. Legend has it that Mazeppa – the Ukraninian resistance hero Iván Stepánovich (circa 1646-1709) - loved the wife of a Polodian count. His punishment was to be lashed to a wild unbroken stallion, whipped and sent galloping across the plains, east in the eye of the rising sun, ‘flying with the winds […] like a globe of fire.’ Defeated at the Battle of Poltava in July 1709, his final days were spent under the protection of Ahmed I. Liszt saw him as a searing Romantic, a man of perennial youth in search of love and liberty, possessed by power, burnt by passion. Like Faust, Dante, Rome, Mephisto, the gypsies, his symbol consumed the composer for fifty years.

No 1 Preludio C major, Presto. ‘Less a prelude to the cycle than a prelude to test the instrument and the disposition of the performer after stepping on to the concert platform’ (Busoni). No 2 A minor, Molto vivace. ‘Paganini devilries’ (Busoni). No 11 Harmonies du Soir [Evening Harmonies] D flat major, Andantino.‘The whole bell-like magic of the pianoforte [extended] with flattering and impetuous charm’ (Busoni). Flowers fading like incense, sounds and perfumes in the air, a tormented heart, a sad beautiful sky spread like a vast altar before the drowning sun, ‘Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!’, Baudelaire’s Harmonie du Soir post-dated Liszt’s third version by several years. Notwithstanding, sharing the heady air of an epoch, poem and music seem inexorably wedded. Liszt, exalted Baudelaire, the ‘singer of everlasting Delight and Anguish, philosopher, poet and artist’ (Revue nationale, 10 December 1863). No 10 F minor, Allegro agitato molto.Appassionata in suggestion (Busoni's impression), yet music sharing something also with the restless climate of Chopin’s F minor Study from Op 10 (1829, dedicated to Liszt) and Schumann’s In der Nacht (1837). ‘Waves of love and of the sea’ (Jacques Seiller).  

Rhapsodie Espagnole (1863)An imposingly-scaled virtuoso canvas, glittering in its melodic treatments, display passages, blind octaves and complex multiple-note writing, this work dates from Liszt’s Roman period. Following a ‘progressive tonality’ scheme beginning in C sharp minor and closing in D major, the work divides into four sections varying popular tunes that Liszt may have heard in the concert room or during visits to Spain in 1844-45. A) Folies d’Espagne, preceded by a ‘preludising’ cadenza. B) Jota aragonesa C) Un poco meno Allegro. D) Summation. The Folies and Jota boasted long European pedigree - Farinelli, Marais and Corelli celebrating the dark, sarabande-like former; Glinka setting the bright latter (from north-eastern Spain) in his Capriccio brillante of 1845. Hans von Bülow, Liszt’s son-in-law, gave the first performance in Amsterdam, 27 April 1866.

© ATEŞ ORGA 2011

Ateş Orga has broadcast, lectured and published extensively on Liszt. His reconstruction of Die Wiege for Four Violins was premiered in 1986. His Munich production of the B minorSonata, played by Thomas Hitzlberger on the composer's 1873 Steingraeber and including the original ending (Ambronay Editions/Harmonia Mundi), won the Liszt International Grand Prix in Budapest in 2007. He produced Paolo Restani's recent Nice recording of the John Field concertos (Brilliant Classics, 4 CDs).

TEXT IN TURKISH | ATEŞ ORGA BIOGRAPHY