Franz Liszt (1811-1886) is often regarded as the greatest pianist of all time. Indeed, even though we have never heard his performance, it is evident from his music and his legacy that he truly revolutionized piano playing. It was so much more than just pushing the boundaries of virtuosity to unprecedented heights. It was reinventing the whole notion of the role of pianist. He had placed the piano centrestage as an ultimate Romantic instrument and himself as an ultimate Romantic artist, a heroic figure, who seemed to merge with his instrument and be able to communicate his deepest emotions and wildest fantasies to a mesmerized audience. There were a lot of keyboard masters before and during Liszt’s time, but he was above them all in his ability to combine all previously known piano techniques and still invent so many more of his own, that the possibilities of the instrument’s musical expression seemed to become limitless. Likewise, there were others who possessed an admirable skill of improvisation, but for Liszt the act of performance itself became almost as important as the composition, it became the act of creation.For this Liszt needed a new musical form. The traditional classical presentation was no longer satisfactory. He needed to take his audience on a continuous emotional journey, to create an unbreakable narrative with all the drama of an opera and all the divine beauty and philosophical depth of a poem.

The Sonata in B minor, composed in 1853 and dedicated to Robert Schumann, is one of the finest examples of this new form, and is considered one of Liszt’s greatest works. Building upon the previous developments of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, especially Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy, Liszt was able to achieve an ingenious structure, which combined a four-movement symphony with the exposition, development, and recapitulation of a single-movement sonata. Here the most important compositional technique, which Liszt championed, was thematic transformation, where several closely related motives undergo striking changes in character following the weave of the drama. This story-telling quality of the Sonata suggests parallels with literature. Although Liszt did not confirm any sources, he was widely believed to have drawn inspiration from the Faust legend. And indeed, from the sinister introduction, followed by the satanic entry of the main theme, through the emotional battle of the development, to a glimpse of heaven and the inevitability of death at the conclusion of this gigantic work – everything points to a philosophical drama of epic proportions.Liszt was fascinated with the Faust story and based his Faust Symphony on Goethe’s drama.

The Mephisto-Waltz No.1, which also has an orchestral version, is, in turn, based on an episode from another Faust, this time by Nikolaus Lenau. It has a subtitle Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (The Dance in the Village Inn). Like the Sonata, this piece has become one of Liszt’s best-known works. It further explores Liszt’s obsessive interest in the diabolical character of Mephistopheles, the struggle between good and evil, and the vulnerability of human morals in the face of the devil’s seduction – all within one unfolding wicked dance. Liszt was perhaps the greatest master of piano transcription. His understanding of the instrument was so profound that he was able to transform a piece of music, whether his own or the music of others, into an entirely new one by using the original melodic and harmonic material and reinventing its colour, palette and texture, making it so inherently pianistic, that it sounded as if it was actually composed for the piano in the first place. In the example of the Mephisto-Waltz, it is hard to tell which had precedence, the piano version, or the orchestral one.

Similar interchangeability is seen in the three Petrarch Sonnets – lyrical pieces, originally conceived as songs, and transcribed for piano. Liszt revised them several times throughout his life. The version included on this CD is the most famous one, published in 1858. The Sonnets became part of the second volume of Années de pèlerinage, which was inspired by Liszt’s travels in Italy in the 1830s. The beauty of this music reflects Liszt’s deep appreciation of Italian art and literature, and his love of Italian opera. These beautiful love songs, based on the poetry of an early humanist Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), combine an exquisite ‘bel canto’ melodic writing with passionate operatic culminations. Sonnet 104 is the most turbulent of the three, while Sonnet 123 possesses a heavenly celestial beauty foreshadowing the later religious period of Liszt’s life.

It is in the etudes that Liszt as a pianistcomposer was most inventive, original and groundbreaking. Exploring and pushing the possibilities of the piano as an instrument, he managed to find new colours and textures unknown before, casting a major influence on piano writing of many future generations of composers. He made it possible for different aspects of piano technique to take precedence over harmony and rhythm in creating unique character pieces out of what could have been a rudimentary exercise. La Campanella is the third etude in the cycle of Grandes études de Paganini, revised from an earlier version in 1851. It is a variation-style elaboration on a theme from the First Violin Concerto by the celebrated violinist Niccolò Paganini, who became a role model for young Liszt’s own aspirations as a super virtuoso.

© Alexei Grynyuk, 2013