ARTIST’S INTRODUCTION My relationship with Liszt started with the FRANZ LISZT (1811-1886) composer’s obvious piano-centric and romantic Franz Liszt is a composer whom I have always repertoire. It then deepened immensely as a found intriguing, fascinating and puzzling. Much challenge. I was one of Lazar Berman’s first has been speculated about Liszt. He was the female students. Berman was regarded as 19th century equivalent of a rock-star, at home his generation’s ultimate Liszt interpreter and 1 Toccata, S. 197a [1.16] on the piano as well as in all social circles. was quick to judge that a diminutive lady with He was the first real touring Pan-European hands spanning a 9th (although I can now 2 Unstern! Sinistre, disastro, S. 208 [4.55] artist, leading multiple lives at once, and yet stretch a 10th on a good day) would ever 3 Wiegenlied (Chant du berceau), S. 198 [3.15] finding the time to write so much music. succeed in playing Liszt well. By the time I 4 Bagatelle sans tonalité, S. 216a [2.47] made my debut in Budapest at the Great Hall Most of Liszt’ music has universal appeal. One of the Liszt Academy, performing Liszt’ First 5 Abschied, russisches Volkslied, S. 251 [2.23] can find copious connections to the past as Piano Concerto, I had won awards for my 6 Resignazione (Ergebung), S. 263/187a [1.23] well as a new individual voice developed from performances of the B minor Sonata and his reportedly stunning pianistic skills, but graduated from the Hochschule “Franz Liszt” in 7 Schlaflos! Frage und Antwort, S. 203 [2.35] inspired by a wide range of attributes: pagan folk Weimar. Mr. Berman came around. 8 Im Traum, S. 207 [1.49] to deeply religious music. Later in life, he 9 Trübe Wolken (Nuages gris), S. 199 [2.52] somehow deconstructed his music, as in an act The B minor Sonata, which is considered one of de-composition, looking deeply inwards into of the greatest masterpieces of the repertoire 0 Gretchen from the Faust Symphony, S. 513 [17.51] his own intricate, perhaps troubled, mind. He has been a close companion for most of my q Sonata in B Minor, S. 178 [30.39] wrote miniatures with titles as puzzling as musical life, but it was not until I was exposed their form, harmonic structure and lack of to the late works on this album that I started Total timings: [71.47] motivic material. He was able to produce music to understand Liszt’ music on a deeper level. that at once revered the past, basked in the I like to think that his late works are glow of the present, and paved a long road, deconstructed in a way that perhaps reveal which would clearly lead us to the Second his innermost secrets. At last, he is giving us Viennese school. a glimpse of his fears and despair and is LUCILLE CHUNG PIANO searching for new musical tools to express them. He is taking everything that had made www.signumrecords.com - 3 - him popular and throwing it away. Gone are the Franz Liszt (b. Raiding [Doborján], Hungary compositional output must be considered on its the Nineteenth Century that included Wagner sweeping romantic gestures and melodies, the [now Austria], October 22, 1811; d. Bayreuth, July own merits as well. Aside from his contributions and Berlioz. rich chords, the pianistic razzle-dazzle. This 31, 1886) to the piano literature, Liszt developed the is music that cherishes economy of means, symphonic poem, an orchestral form that Liszt’s representative early works for the piano silences and uneasiness. In this process, I Franz Liszt’s transformative development of would become one of the late Romantic period’s include his Grandes études de Paganini and discovered that the older Liszt was always piano technique, accomplished through his quintessential genres. His reimagination of the the Etudes d’exécution transcendante. The present in the earlier works, if perhaps buried performance, composition, and pedagogy, symphonic form is most powerfully manifest technical challenges contained in these scores, in his subconscious. It is what makes Liszt’ represents his greatest and most lasting in his greatest orchestral work, Eine Faust- composed between 1838 and 1840 and music special and timeless. contribution. He was for the piano what Symphonie in drei Charakterbilden (1857) dedicated to Clara Schumann, reveal the Niccolò Paganini was for the violin: a visionary (A Faust Symphony in three character pictures), breathtaking extent of Liszt’s virtuosity. Moreover, The unique program on this album, centered composer-performer who redefined the standard after Goethe. Though programmatic, the Faust they represent the first of the pianist Liszt’s around the B minor Sonata, and including the of virtuosity for his instrument. As with Symphony does not narrate Goethe’s Faust pathbreaking technical advances (developments ravishingly beautiful “Gretchen” transcription Paganini, Liszt’s extraordinary facility was per se, but provides sketches of Faust, Gretchen, contemporaneous with the evolution of the from the Faust Symphony, as well as a selection part and parcel of his compositional approach. and Mephistopheles. (Liszt’s arrangement of piano itself into a larger instrument, capable of of the late works, is my homage to Liszt, and (Also like Paganini, Liszt’s instrumental ability the Symphony’s “Gretchen” movement appears greater dynamic and textural possibilities). Liszt an attempt to draw a full circle around his derived in part from unique physical advantages. on this disc.) returned to the Paganini and “Transcendental” fascinating world and psyche. Long, narrow hands that lacked webbing between Etudes in 1851, ironing out some of their the fingers allowed him to stretch the length of But of course, in considering Liszt the composer, thorniest difficulties (though they remain Lucille Chung, 2018 a tenth with ease. With the unusual flexibility his piano music is key. The piano provided extremely challenging) and revising voicings in the fourth finger of each hand, he could the laboratory for Liszt’s innovations. And beyond and textures to achieve a clearer, more brilliant create luminous accompanimental textures while merely representing one of the richest and most sound. The following year, he would begin managing multiple voices in counterpoint.) daunting contributions to the instrument’s writing the centerpiece of his piano oeuvre. repertoire, his extensive catalogue of piano Because of his overwhelming gifts as a music demonstrates radical new methods of Liszt dedicated his Sonata in B Minor, S. 178 performer, one rarely thinks of Liszt the thematic development and bold experiments (1852–53) to Robert Schumann – a reciprocal composer irrespective of Liszt the pianist. with harmony and form – innovations that gesture following Schumann’s dedication to As biographer Alan Walker contends, “Liszt made Liszt the most influential composer of Liszt of his Phantasie, Op. 17. Liszt sent the composed with the outlook of a performer, and the New German School, the progressive manuscript to the Schumanns’ home, but it performed with the insight of a composer.” Yet his vanguard of Western music in the latter half of arrived only after Robert had entered the asylum - 4 - - 5 - in Endenich where we would live out his final and foreshadows the leitmotivic dramatic thrust The Sonata’s first page presents the cellular sotto voce in the work’s opening measures signals years. Clara was indifferent to the Sonata and of Wagner’s operas. material on which much of the Sonata’s structure important junctures as the Sonata progresses, as if never performed it. She was not alone in her is based. The descending scale played piano, lowering and raising the curtain between acts. indifference; following the work’s premiere, given The Sonata continues to be the most intensely by Hans von Bülow in January 1857, Berlin’s scrutinized of Liszt’s compositions, as much for Nationalzeitung derided it as “an invitation the intrigue surrounding a supposed program to hissing and stamping.” Eduard Hanslick as for its sheer expressive magnitude. Though declared, “anyone who has heard it and finds it Liszt never explicitly offered a program, the beautiful is beyond help.” Sonata’s narrative quality is too strong to dismiss, especially considering Liszt’s general Certainly, the B Minor Sonata’s form is aesthetic predispositions. “New wine demands unorthodox, and its expressive character takes new bottles,” he famously proclaimed, regarding no prisoners. Historical perspective, however, the traditional forms as the purview of history The first subject combines two consequential followed by a descending triplet; then, in the bass, has remedied its initial reception; today, the (and Brahms as lamentably old-fashioned). motifs: the first, an assertive dotted-rhythm gesture a marcato gesture built on repeated notes. Sonata is widely regarded as a highly original From the composer of Après une lecture du work, and one of Liszt’s greatest accomplishments. Dante, fantasia quasi sonata and St. François d’Assise: le prédication aux oiseaux, the It is a work of startling formal ingenuity. pedestrian ‘Sonata in B minor’ seems out of Across its four continuous movements, Liszt character. Peter Raabe, the German conductor superimposes a macrocosmic sonata form, who assembled the first complete chronology so that the first movement serves as of Liszt’s music, theorized that the B Minor the exposition; the second movement, the constituted a Faust Sonata, with themes, à development; the third movement, the transition la Eine Faust-Symphonie, depicting Faust, to the recapitulation; and the finale, a triumphant Gretchen, and Mephistopheles. Others have recapitulation and introspective coda. But in suggested that the Sonata illustrates the fall addition to combining sonata structures (as of man; still others speculate that the Sonata well as, nota bene, a fugato third movement), is autobiographical.