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DDD Total Time = 75.26 / Recorded in April 1995 Liszt’s phenomenal gifts as a virtuoso pianist were well documented by his contemporaries. Schumann wrote "I have never found any artist except Paganini to possess in so high a degree as Liszt the power of subjecting, elevating and leading the public", while Mendelssohn, never one to be hoodwinked by overt displays of virtuosity, wrote "I have not seen any musician in whom musical feeling ran, as in Liszt, into the very tips of the fingers and there streamed out immediately." Many others commented on his astonishing gifts as a sight-reader and his ability to read orchestral scores at the piano. Grieg, having handed Liszt the first draft of his Violin Sonata was amazed; "In the first place he had never seen nor heard the work, and in the second it was a Sonata with a violin part now above, now below, independent of the piano part. And what does Liszt do? He plays the whole thing, root and branch, violin and piano, nay, more, for he played fuller, more broadly. The violin part got its due right in the middle of the piano part. He was literally all over the piano at once, without missing a note." It was, therefore, entirely natural that Liszt the performer, should seek to extend the range of tonal colour and variety available on a single keyboard and, as early as 1837, he envisaged a time when "the more expressive organ keyboard will show the natural way to the invention of pianos with two or three keyboards." Of course this never came to reality but Liszt, the performer, seemed to find in the organ, a wholly rewarding outlet for his expressive desires and both Adolphe Pictet, a philosopher and orientalist, and George Sands, Chopin’s peculiarly androgynous mistress, chronicled an occasion in St. Nicholas church, Fribourg, when Liszt was given free reign to improvise on the organ. His impassioned fantasy on the Dies Irae left both overwhelmed, George Sand commenting on the strange transformation which seemed to come over Liszt as he played; "Never did the outline of his Florentine profile seem purer and paler than in this dark air of mystical fear and religious grief". Astonishing as his organ playing may have seemed to his friends, Liszt rarely performed publicly on the instrument and never actually wrote anything for it until he moved to Weimar in 1842. At Weimar Liszt came into contact with the living tradition of German organists in the person of Johann Gottlob Töpfer who had been appointed city organist in 1830. Töpfer expounded to Liszt his ideas on organ construction and design and introduced him to one of his most talented pupils, Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg (1827-1908) who was to prove invaluable both in inspiring Liszt to compose for the instrument and in preparing Liszt’s organ works for publication. Then, in September 1855, Liszt was asked to write a work for the inaugural recital of the rebuilt organ of Merseburg Cathedral in which the builder, Friedrich Ladegast, had incorporated several ranks of ancient pipes to produce an instrument capable of handling both the Baroque organ repertoire and big quasi-orchestral Romantic works. The result, Fantasia and Fugue on ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’, was only the first of several pieces Liszt wrote expressly for the Merseburg organ; indeed everything he wrote for the organ before 1875 was written with this instrument in mind. In all Liszt wrote some 50 works for organ solo the vast majority of which were transcriptions of works both by himself and other composers. Many of his organ pieces were in themselves re-arrangements of his earlier music and, indeed, only two were originally conceived for the organ and both of those exist in several different versions. "Excelsior!" – Preludio for organ This is an arrangement for organ (or piano four-hands) with optional chorus of the opening movement from The Bells of Strasbourg for baritone, chorus and orchestra and dates, as does the original work, from 1874. Either Liszt or Gottschalg (who prepared it for publication) crossed out the word "Excelsior" from the title presumably on the grounds that while it is the only word sung by the optional chorus the title has no meaning when performed, as here, without singers. Wagner heard a performance of the work whilst he was composing the early drafts of Parsifal and included in the opera’s finished score the five-note chant-like figure with which the piece begins. Am Grabe Richard Wagners Liszt composed this piece on 22nd May 1883, the 70th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, and had it performed immediately before a performance he was conducting in Weimar of the Prelude and Good Friday Music from Parsifal. Liszt made versions of the piece for piano solo and for string quartet with optional harp. At the head of his autograph manuscript of the organ version Liszt wrote "Wagner once reminded me of the similarity between his Parsifal and my Excelsior which was written earlier. May this remembrance remain here. He has fulfilled the great and the sublime in the art of the present day." The music’s intimate character and its "perdendo" ending are Liszt’s token of respect to his son-in-law who had died just three months earlier. Funérailles Another composer whom Liszt greatly admired was Chopin (although they fell out following Liszt’s use of Chopin’s Paris apartment to carry on an affair with the pianist Camille Pleyel) and it was on hearing the news of Chopin’s death (on 17th October 1849) that he composed Funérailles. The previous year many of Liszt’s friends had been caught up in the bloody Hungarian Revolution and clearly much of the intensity and passion of Funérailles is in memory of their heroic sacrifice. But following the dramatic opening comes a passage strongly reminiscent of Chopin’s Polonaise in A flat and clearly pointing to the profound effect his fellow pianist and composer’s death had on Liszt. Originally written for piano solo and published as the seventh of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses this organ version was made by Nicolas Kynaston. Les Morts – Oraison In 1859 Liszt’s third illegitimate child by the Countess Marie d’Agoult, Daniel, died at the age of 20. Although by that time Liszt had abandoned Marie (who had, under the pen-name Daniel Stern, published an outrageous exposé of Liszt’s treatment of her and their three children) he was still close to his children and was devastated at the loss of his only son. In his grief he turned to a poem by Abbé Lamennais, Les Morts, using it as the direct inspiration for what he described as an "Oration" in which certain lines of the poem are set to purely instrumental music. Les Morts – Oraison was completed in Weimar during August 1860 and published in three different versions: for orchestra, for piano four-hands and for organ (which, Liszt commented, was "written for my younger daughter Cosima von Bülow"). The organ version did not appear in published form for another 30 years when it was issued along with another organ piece (Introitus) and given the title Trauerode. The music, from a subdued opening with its desolate melodic line and occasional, grief-laden chords, followed by short recitative-like phrases and a passionate, almost violent outburst before bursting into a blaze of light and glory to end on a note of almost mystic awe illustrates these verses from the poem;
Like us now, they also once trod on this earth, Orpheus – Symphonic Poem In 1854 Liszt composed the fourth of his 13 Symphonic Poems for orchestra. Inspired by Gluck’s opera Orpheus Liszt wrote the work to be performed immediately before a staging of the complete opera in Weimar. Wagner regarded it as Liszt’s finest creation; "This is one of the most beautiful, most perfect, indeed most incomparable Symphonic Poems." Liszt himself, in a lengthy preface to the score, explains the programmatic content of the music which is not based on the actual legend of Orpheus and Euridice but on the character of Orpheus the singer (represented by the melody heard after a short introduction full of harp-like passagework) as depicted singing to his lyre and taming the wild beasts with the beauty of his music on an ancient Etruscan vase Liszt had seen on a visit to the Louvre. Although the organ version with detailed registrations was made by Robert Schaab for performance on the Merseburg organ Liszt himself made far-reaching alterations and modifications which were incorporated into the version prepared for publication by Gottschalg. Fantasia and Fugue on "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" One of the two works Liszt originally composed for organ solo the huge Fantasia and Fugue is based on a chorale melody from Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète first staged in Paris on 16th April 1849. Liszt was commissioned to arrange a number of scenes from the opera for piano which were published in January 1850. The following month he went to see the opera for himself in Dresden and was immediately struck by much of Meyerbeer’s music. A request for an organ work from Ferdinand Breuning combined with a forced period of recuperation (not for Liszt but for his mistress, Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein) at Eilsen Spa led to Liszt working on a number of themes from Le Prophète and turning them into an extended organ work. He started work on what was to become the Fantasia and Fugue on "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" in October 1850 and completed it in 1852 when, for commercial reasons, it was published for "Organ or Pedal-Piano". Liszt was not satisfied with this version and undertook substantial revisions three years later. This revised version, dedicated to Meyerbeer, and premièred by Alexander Winterberger at the opening recital of the Merseburg Cathedral organ on 25th September 1855, has become one of the acknowledged masterpieces of Romantic organ music and has remained firmly embedded in the repertoire ever since. Although it runs without a break it comprises three clearly-defined sections. First comes an extended Prelude in which, after a dramatic chordal introduction, the chorale theme is given out on the organ’s softest stops. This is followed by a subdued Adagio after which an energetic Fugue brings the work to its triumphant. Page revised 27.06.03 |
