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LISZT SONATA IN B MINOR DANTE SONATA SijIX CHANT S POLONAI S KEVIN FITZ -GERAL D PIANI S T Après une Lecture du Dante Fantasia quasi Sonata FRANZ LISZT In September of 1839, however, Liszt was living with an earlier mistress, the countess Marie d’Agoult, and their three children, in the small Italian fishing (1811-1886) village of San Rossore, near Pisa in the region of Tuscany. At that time he began work on a Fragment nach Dante (Fragment after Dante), a piano work inspired by a reading of Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia (1308-1321). On September 26, Marie wrote a letter to the painter Henri Lehmann, saying: “The bravo suonatore ij [a good player] began this morning a fragment dantesque which is sending him to the very Devil. He is so consumed by it that he won’t go to Naples, so as to No one doubts that Franz Liszt was one of the greatest pianists of all time. complete this work.” Having two thematically related parts, Liszt gave the first He was also the composer of a vast oeuvre, including some of the finest repertoire public performance of the work at Vienna on December 5 of that year. The ever composed for the piano. We hear several such works on this recording. manuscript of this version of the work has disappeared. All of the pieces recorded here were composed while Liszt was the In 1849, shortly after settling in Weimar, Liszt revised the piece, conflating Kapellmeister–the director of chapel music–for the court in Weimar, where he its two parts into a one-movement sonata, and giving it a title borrowed from was employed from 1848 to 1861. In this capacity he also served as conductor a poem written twelve years earlier by Victor Hugo: Après une lecture de Dante. of the court orchestra, numbering some forty-five players. Liszt had only Hugo’s poem is number twenty-seven from a set of thirty-two titled Les Voix recently retired from the concert stage, at the young age of 35, while he was intérieures (1837). Its first line reads (in French): “When the poet paints hell, at the height of his power as a performer, doing so on the recommendation he paints his life.” After further revisions, Liszt published his work in a three- of Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, with whom he lived during his volume set entitled Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). Volume I is titled Weimar years. At her urging, Liszt concentrated on composition rather than Première année: Suisse (First Year: Switzerland), and contains nine pieces, a performance. It was a very fruitful period in his life. number of which were revisions of works published earlier. Volume II is titled - 2 - - 3 - Deuxième année: Italie (Second Year: Italy), and contains eleven works, three and there were only rare performances of it. The English composer, conductor, of which are revised versions of his Tre sonetti del Petrarca (Three Sonnets of and critic, Constant Lambert, advocated for Liszt when it was unpopular to do Petrarch). The inspiration for these works is rooted in Liszt’s impressions of the so, and he made an arrangement of the work for piano and orchestra which literature, painting, and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. The seventh work was used by Frederick Ashton for a ballet that was popular during the Second in this volume is the one that interests us here and is titled: Après une Lecture World War. The piece was arranged for two pianos by Vittorio Bresciani. du [sic] Dante: Fantasia Quasi Sonata (After a Reading of Dante: Fantasia rather Liszt also wrote a Dante Symphony, another work in D minor, which he like a Sonata), commonly known as the Dante Sonata. Volume III is titled simply completed in 1856. Its first orchestral performance, in Dresden in 1857, was Troisième année (Third Year) and contains eleven works. under-rehearsed and unsuccessful, but the work gradually won acceptance. Considered by Alan Walker “the crowning achievement” of the Italian Liszt’s original plan was to write three movements: Inferno, Purgatorio and volume, the Dante Sonata is “one of Liszt’s more formidable compositions.” An Paradiso, but his friend and future son in law, Richard Wagner, advised against improvisatory work of a decidedly programmatic nature, the first part, in D a musical portrayal of paradise, and Liszt instead added a choral setting of the minor, depicts Dante’s harrowing descent into hell. The key of D minor is often first verse of the Magnificat, which is generally considered to be an unsuccessful used for pieces about death and the underworld. It opens appropriately with conclusion to the work. By 1859 Liszt had transcribed the symphony for two an ominous series of falling tritones–the so-called devil in music–destabilizing pianos, and he played this version in Paris with Camille Saint-Saëns at the all sense of tonality. Along with a descending chromatic line, it provides the home of the artist, engraver, illustrator, and sculptor, Gustave Doré. menacing thematic material for the first part of the work. The second part, in the raised mediant of F-sharp major, portrays the beatific vision of paradise. Chopin/Liszt: Six Chants Polonais This key is often used for depictions of religious devotion and heavenly bliss. The theme for this part of the work is similar to a chorale and is derived from the Known primarily as the composer of works for piano, the great French- theme of the first part, providing an example of Liszt’s so-called metamorphosis Polish pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) also composed two concertos, a of themes. The struggle between the two keys represents the ultimate triumph few chamber works, and some songs. He wrote neither opera, symphony, nor of heaven over hell, a struggle depicted in a great many of Liszt’s works. oratorio. His works for solo piano include études, preludes, ballades, scherzos, The Dante Sonata was little understood for the half century after its premiere, rondos, impromptus, mazurkas, nocturnes, waltzes, sonatas, polonaises, a - 4 - - 5 - fantasie, and some miscellaneous works. Liszt’s order Chopin’s order, English translation But between 1829 and 1847, Chopin wrote nineteen song settings of poems and German title Polish title, poet, date of the Polish by six Polish poets, of which seventeen appear in his Polish Melodies, opus 74. 1 Mädchens Wunsch 1 Zyczenie (S. Witwicki) The Maiden’s Wish Of these seventeen, collected and published in 1857, Franz Liszt used six as 1829 the basis of works for solo piano, which he composed between 1857 and 1860, 2 Der Frühling 2 Wiosna (S. Witwicki) Spring dedicating them to Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittengenstein to whom he was 1838 then engaged. While Liszt’s works are called transcriptions, and to a real degree 3 Das Ringlein 14 Pierscien (S. Witwicki) The Ring that is what they are, most of them are also modest expansions on Chopin’s 1836 original ideas, developing the thoughts contained in the original poems. 4 Bacchanal 4 Hulanka (S. Witwicki) Drinking Song With only a few exceptions the original Chopin songs, with piano 1830 accompaniment, are uncomplicated, direct, forthright...and even sight-readable, 5 Meine Freuden 12 Moja Pieszczotka (A. Mickiewicz) My Sweetheart unlike most of his solo piano works. All of them are beautiful, but they were not 1831 published during his lifetime and are among the least known of all his works. In 6 Die Heimkehr 15 Narzeczony (S. Witwicki) The Bridegroom his transcriptions Liszt often uses Chopin’s material almost verbatim, sometimes 1831 filling out the accompaniment, but he frequently also provides a rather free version of a “second stanza” of a song, and adds elaborative interludes or codas. In two instances the German translations of the titles are not identical to the The songs are charming and delightful, with only Die Heimkehr containing some original Polish and, in fact, they give distracting notions of their poems’ content. darker, bravura passages. The transcriptions are among Liszt’s more popular For example, we have the German title Meine Freuden (My Joys) while the Polish pieces. means My Sweetheart, and the German Die Heimkehr (The Homecoming) while The relationship of Liszt’s piano arrangements to Chopin’s songs is somewhat the Polish means The Bridegroom. In all other instances the German and the complex and the following table may help to clarify it. Polish are equivalent and they give fair notions of the contents of the poems. Of the songs used by Liszt, all but one were written by the poet Stefan Witwicki. The song Meine Freuden (Polish: Moja Pieszczotka) was written by the poet - 6 - - 7 - Adam Mickiewicz. the piano. Meine Freuden is a typical love song; and certainly Bacchanal is a typical But it has not always been so. For one of his recitals at Carnegie Hall in New drinking song. But the other poems have lyrical twists. In the mazurka-like York City, the great Polish pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) performed Mädchens Wunsch, for instance, a high-spirited song about flirtation, the lover the Sonata, and a reviewer described it as having “much gloom in its composition, wishes she were the sun, the better to shine on all of creation. In Frühling, a intentional and otherwise.” herder enjoys the sights and fragrances of spring, but with a tear in his eye. In Ringlein the lover sings of his regret that the woman who accepted his ring is It is another long and exacting work for both player and now married to another man. In the anxious Die Heimkehr, the wind howls and hearers.

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