No one who has undertaken a close study of the man and musician Franz Liszt can avoid being struck by his split personality. He could be simple and sophisticated, naïve and cunning, miserly and generous, but through all of this his musical talent remained exceptional.
Evgeny Kissin. PHOTO: SHEILA ROCK
He wrote his music ‘out of a contradictory, yet comprehensible mixture of religious zeal and vainglorious mastery [ … ] also out of a profound sense of inner uncertainty and disharmony’ (Bryce Morrison).
Liszt’s unstable temperament made him constantly awkward, and for him music was the key to survival. In his art he found the remedy and solace for the distress in his mind. His music reflects not only the nuances of his turbulent emotions but also of his sparkling intellect. The results of his creativity were often controversial and of varying quality, but they may also be seen as a testimonial to a magnanimous, visionary and spiritually generous man.
It is only natural that Liszt’s compositions for the piano dominate in the catalogue of his works – they number over three hundred. They fall into two categories: on the one hand original works and on the other transcriptions and fantasias based on music by other composers. His first mature work is Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (Poetic and Religious Harmonies) from 1834. The title comes from a collection of poems by Alphonse de Lamartine, to whom the composition in ten movements is dedicated. By 1839 Liszt’s compositions included twelve of the twenty-four études which he had mapped out – Vingt-quatre grandes études (24 Great Studies) and Album d’un voyageur, in which he expresses in music his impressions from a journey in Switzerland with Marie d’Agoult, his companion at the time.
The music Liszt wrote in the 1830s was revised and received its final form in 1848–52, while he was kapellmeister at the Weimar court. It nevertheless remains the work of the young Liszt, and several commentators contend that his revisions did not always improve upon his original compositions. The twelve études appeared in revised form in 1851 as Ètudes d’exécution transcendante, which includes the lyric piece Ricordanza (Remembrance).
In the years 1845–52 Liszt reworked Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, of which one of the highlights is Funérailles (Funerals), simultaneously gloomy and dramatic. It was long believed that the revised version of the work was written as a reaction to the death of Frédéric Chopin in 1849, but in fact Liszt was commemorating three of his friends who lost their lives during the revolution in Hungary in the same year.
At the same time Liszt also reworked seven of the pieces in Album d’un voyageur for the first of three books entitled Années de pèlerinage (Pilgrim Years). Vallée d’Obermann, introspective but with flashes of ecstasy, was inspired by an event in the novel Obermann, the chef d’oeuvre of the French author Étienne de Sénancour. The novel depicts the disgust, distress and dissatisfaction of the human mind – a topic of natural interest to Liszt.
Around the year 1840 Liszt composed four piano pieces under the title Venezia e Napoli (Venice and Naples), with thematic links to the symphonic poem Tasso, Lamento e trionfo (Tasso, Lament and Triumph), which he wrote nine years later. In his 1859 revision of Venice and Naples he omitted one of the movements. Gondoliera (Gondolier’s song), Canzone (Song) and Tarantelle (an Italian dance) are all based on tunes by other composers – in the case of Canzone on an aria by Rossini.
Liszt’s only sonata is one of the great piano masterpieces of the nineteenth century. The work, in a single movement divided into three clearly defined sections, is full of dramatic power and lyrical expression, with frequent sudden changes of mood. A principal feature of the work is thematic metamorphosis, which is used to its extreme consequence. Liszt’s genius is apparent in his use of a relatively limited amount of musical material to create a monumental and highly varied work. The introduction is followed by the presentation of three different themes, which are subsequently developed before the transition to ‘the slow movement’, with two motifs, a central section and a coda. The third section of the sonata comprises the second half of the development from the first section, and concludes with a recapitulation and coda.
Text: Hans H. Rowe
English version: Roger Martin
EVGENY KISSIN was born in Moscow in 1971 and began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of two. At six years old, he entered a special school for gifted children, the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who has remained his only teacher. He came to international attention in 1984 when he performed Chopin’s Piano Concertos in the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow State Philharmonic under Dmitri Kitaenko. Since then he has appeared at the world’s major concert halls and been given numerous awards and tributes, including the Shostakovich Award, one of Russia ’s highest musical honors. He was also awarded an Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Kissin’s recordings have also received numerous accolades, and past awards include the Edison Klassiek in The Netherlands, Grammy awards, and the Diapason d’Or and the Grand Prix of La Nouvelle Academie du Disque in France. The 2010–2011 season sees engagements in major cities across Europe, including London, Milan, Paris, Salzburg, Vienna, and an extensive North American tour.