EARL WILD LISZT THE 1985 SESSIONS DISC 1 From “Années de Pèlerinage” Second Year: Italy (S161/R10b) 1 Après une lecture du Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata) 15:58 [“Dante Sonata”] (Andante maestoso - Presto agitato assai - Tempo I (Andante) - Andante (quasi improvvisato) - Andante - Recitativo - Adagio - Allegro moderato - Più mosso - Tempo rubato e molto ritenuto - Andante - Più mosso - Allegro - Allegro vivace - Presto - Andante (Tempo I)) 2 Sonetto 47 del Petrarca 6:20 (Preludio con moto - Sempre mosso con intimo sentimento) 3 Sonetto 104 del Petrarca 6:31 (Agitato assai - Adagio - Agitato) 4 Sonetto 123 del Petrarca 7:04 (Lento placido - Sempre lento - Più lento - (Tempo iniziale)) From “Années de Pèlerinage” Third Year (S163/R10e) 5 Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este 7:41 (Fountains of the Villa d’Este) (Allegretto) 6 Ballade No.2 in B minor (S171/R16) 13:59 (Allegro moderato - Lento assai - Tempo I - Lento assai - Allegretto - Allegro deciso - Allegretto - Allegretto sempre legato - Allegro moderato - Un poco più mosso - Andantino) From “Liebesträume, 3 Notturnos” (S541/R211) 7 Liebesträume (Notturno) No.2 in E flat Major (2nd Version) 4:27 (“Seliger Tod”) (Quasi lento, abbandonandosi) 8 Liebesträume (Notturno) No.3 in A flat Major 4:26 (“O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst!”) (Poco allegro, con affetto) 9 Concert Étude No.3 in D flat Major (“Un Sospiro”) (S144/R5) 5:14 (Allegro affettuoso) Total Playing Time : 72:16 – 2 – DISC 2 Bach/Liszt: Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (S463/R120) 11:12 1 Fantasia (Grave) 5:49 2 Fugue (Allegro) 5:23 Sonata in B minor (S178/R21) 28:27 3 Lento assai - Allegro energico - Grandioso - Recitative - Andante sostenuto - Quasi Adagio 18:35 4 Fugue: Allegro energico - Più mosso - Stretta quasi Presto - Presto - Prestissimo - 9:50 Andante sostenuto - Allegro moderato - Lento assai 5 Die Loreley (Second Version (S532/R209)) 6:31 (Nicht schleppend) From “Harmonies poétiques et religieuses” (S173/R14) 6 Funérailles 12:29 (Introduzione (Adagio) - Lagrimoso - Poco a poco più moto - Allegro energico assai - Più lento) From “Six Chants Polonais” (S480/R145) from Seventeen Polish Songs, Opus 74 7 Chopin/Liszt: My Joys (“Moja pieszczotka” (Nocturne)) 4:21 (Quasi allegretto) 8 Mephisto Polka (S217/R39) 4:03 (Allegretto) 9 Consolation No.3 in D flat Major (S172/R12) 4:32 (Lento placido) Total Playing Time: 72:03 – 3 – Franz Liszt – 4 – FRANZ LISZT “In Franz Liszt we have not only the most important figure among pianists in the nineteenth century, but a universal genius, who summed up in himself the whole development of piano play- ing since the invention of the instrument.” – Edward Burlingame Hill (1872-1960), American composer and teacher. Franz Liszt’s influence on the 19th century was overwhelming and through his numerous stu- dents, his strong musical presence influenced piano playing into the 20th century. He developed piano playing not only through his own compositions, but also through his teaching. His compo- sitions influenced many other composers. Additionally, Liszt helped promote the works of many composers during his years as a touring virtuoso. Later, in his position as head of the Weimar orchestra and opera house, he was an important influence on contemporary tastes, tirelessly pro- moting the works of his contemporaries. In his later years, Liszt did his best to promote the works of the newer Russian school of composers, including Borodin and Mussorgsky. Numerous other composers – Grieg, Smetana, Glazunov, and of course, Wagner, have copiously written about the value they placed on Liszt’s moral encouragement as an important aid in their careers. As one of Liszt’s most illustrious students, Moritz Rosenthal (1862-1946) once wrote, “When one was with Liszt, one felt the power of his overwhelming personality...” Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a grateful subject for biographers, factual and fictional. He pos- sessed every feature of a romantic personage, as we of the 21st century are apt to portray the great personalities of the 19th century. He had a brilliant beginning as a child prodigy; he was kissed on his brow by Beethoven and studied with Beethoven’s greatest student, Carl Czerny; as a youth he was the prince of pianists and the leading artistic figure in European capitals at the time when Europeans were, according to our dearest beliefs, joyous and preoccupied with glamor rather than work or war; he wore flowing hair and had a wild appearance about him; he loved women, and women loved him; and in his middle age, became an Abbé, as some sinners do in romantic novels. Liszt wrote music with expressive and meaningful titles, often with a poem for an epigraph; and he was unquestionably, with Wagner, the co-author of the “music of the future,” so designated by the despairing contemporaries for its quality of hugeness of design and grandiloquence of idiom. As a pianist, Liszt was unique (in the correct use of the word). According to Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), “Liszt possesses a degree of velocity and complete independence of finger, and a thoroughly musical feeling, which cannot be equalled. In a word, I have heard no performer whose – 5 – musical perceptions extend to the very tips of his fingers and emanate directly from them as Liszt’s do.” What he was able to do as a pianist-interpreter, Liszt was able to do even better as a com- poser. The hundreds of scores he wrote illustrated an astonishing command of the keyboard and an even more extraor- dinary musical mind. Not only did Liszt compose numerous original works, but he was throughout his life continually compelled to transcribe his own and other composers’ music for the piano. How Liszt managed to find the time to accomplish all this can only be explained by an acceptance that a genius works in mysterious ways. Liszt’s Après une lecture du Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata), which is often simply entitled “Dante Sonata,” is the final work in the second book (Italy) of his Années de Pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”). According to Liszt biogra- Earl Wild with Lord Londonderry at the Londonderry Family Estate, 1986 pher and cataloguer, Humphrey Searle, “The Dante Sonata [Disc 1, 1 ] has no programme as such, but in it Liszt clearly expressed his reactions to the “strange tongues, horrible cries, words of pain, tones of anger” which Dante described in his Inferno.” Liszt first sketched his Après une lecture du Dante (“After reading Dante”) in 1839, completing the work some ten years later. The “reading” refers to Victor Hugo’s poems inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” So impressed with Dante’s writings was Liszt, that he wrote to Hector Berlioz: “Dante will perhaps one day find musical expression in the Beethoven of the future.” Ingeniously based on three basic ideas, the Dante Sonata begins with jar- ring, descending-octave tritones (known as diabolus in musica). Later on, we hear these tritones in less-dissonant intervals as Liszt introduces the “Paradiso” tremolos. The second basic idea heard in the work is a grim, chromatic descending figure played in groups of two repeated octaves in the – 6 – right hand that alternate with dark-colored chords in the left hand. For the final basic idea, Liszt abandons the stormy D minor in favor of F-sharp major, counterbalancing, so-to-speak, Hell with the love that is evoked. The rising figures bring us to the end and “Paradiso.” Liszt’s Three Petrarch Sonnets (S161/R10b) began life as songs composed in 1838-9 before their magical transcription into ardent piano pieces in 1858 and inclusion in the second book (Italy) of his Années de Pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”). Based on Francesco Petrarca’s (1304-1374) emo- tional sonnet “Pace non trovo” [I find no peace] the Sonetto 47 del Petrarca [Disc 1, 2 ] is a tri- umph of Romantic contrasts (peace and war, hate and love, grief and laughter, and death and life). The Sonetto 104 del Petrarca [Disc 1, 3 ] is based on the sonnet “Benedetto sia ‘l giorno” [Blessed be the day], an ardent lyric written by Petrarch to his beloved Laura five-hundred years before Liszt’s time. The Sonetto 123 del Petrarca [Disc 1, 4 ] is based on the sonnet “I vidi in terra angelici costumi” [I beheld on earth angelic grace]. In this piece we hear Liszt and his impressions of Italy, Liszt and his love, and most of all Liszt and his pianism – emotional music with genuine poetic feeling. The years 1839-1847 are generally recognized as Liszt’s “period of transcendental execution,” during which time he gave well over a thousand concerts throughout most of Western Europe, Turkey, Poland and Russia. The First Year: (Suisse) of the three collections entitled “Années de Pelerinage” (Years of Pilgrimage) was begun in 1848 (the year following this highly active period), as the first flowerings of a more introspective approach to composition, moving gradually away from the wristbreaking pyrotechnics of previous compositions. The Second Year: (Italie) was com- pleted in 1858. Between 1867 and 1877 he completed his third set in the series, a more austere and impressionistic group of pieces, reflective of the mature musician. The third group was published in 1883 and four of the seven pieces are music of mourning or lamentation. Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este (Fountains of the Villa d’Este) [Disc 1, 5 ] is an impressionistic rendering of the fountains amidst gloomy cypresses as seen from Liszt’s quarters at the Villa d’Este. Liszt pref- aced the music with a fragment from the Gospel of St. John: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him...” The Ballade No.2 in B minor (S171/R16) [Disc 1, 6 ] was composed in 1853.