PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

the tutti the coda begins with a reprise of the Fisherman’s
Song, before resuming the faster tempo and returning to
the material of untraced origin, interspersed with
fragments of the Brigands’ Song to bring together the
threads of the twenty-three-year-old Liszt’s very confident
composition.
Compact Disc Two
We do not know if Liszt ever heard his Concerto for Piano
and Strings—the so-called Malédiction—even in
rehearsal, and yet, on the evidence of surviving manuscripts,
he spent some time over a period of years getting
the work into its very satisfactory final shape. (A large
manuscript of an earlier fragment for piano and strings
containing some material in common with the final score
is held at the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar.) Nor do
we know why he wrote on this occasion for strings only,
since all his other works with solo piano of the same
period, whether performed, published, completed or not,
are all for symphony orchestra including trombones and
percussion. This powerful single-movement piece is
among Liszt’s earliest efforts at finding a way forward for
the sonata principle; although its outlines conform to the
general pattern of exposition (with the obligatory second
subject and codetta), development and recapitulation, its
narrative is susceptible to almost operatic changes of
scene, mood and tempo.
The kinship of the opening motif 1 (it is just this motif
which Liszt labels ‘Malédiction’, rather than the whole
score, which he left untitled) with the later Orage from the
first of the Années de pèlerinage (see Vol 39) has often
been remarked, as has Liszt’s use of the succeeding first
theme proper—phrases notable for one long chord
followed by a pair of two identical short ones—in the
Mephistopheles movement of the Faust Symphony. The
strings first accompany this menacing theme with quiet
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trills, and next build a sinuous chromatic line around it.
The opening motif generates the livelier transition
material, the last much calmer section of which Liszt
marked ‘Pleurs, angoisse’ (‘Tears, anguish’). The tonality
has ranged quite widely from the initial E minor by this
stage, but a recitative introduced by piano and cello brings
us to the second theme proper 2, in the traditional
relative major, and to material which Liszt would recall in
as late a work as the Valse oubliée No 3 of 1883 (see
Vol 1). The recitative is fully incorporated into this theme
before the livelier tempo Vivo is reached—effectively the
codetta, which Liszt marks ‘Raillerie’—and a full close in
G major is reached. The development immediately moves
to E flat, concentrating upon the first theme 3 and
leading to a cadential recitative where the introduction is
recalled. When the orchestra reappears we are at the
recapitulation 4, but the order of events is somewhat
altered. The earlier transition material is first, followed by
the opening motif from piano and orchestra. The first
theme now appears in E major, and the tempo increases.
The cello motif is now incorporated into the first thematic
group before a further increase in tempo brings the second
subject material, transformed anon into the coda, with just
a brief recall of the first theme in the last four bars.
For the complete history of the posthumously
published Concerto in E flat (sometimes unhelpfully
referred to as ‘Concerto No 3’) the reader is recommended
to Jay Rosenblatt’s excellent introduction to the published
score (Editio Musica Budapest) in which he describes the
considerable degree of detective work which he was
obliged to undertake to reassemble this composition
which had remained unknown for well over a century, a
feat he accomplished with much flair and wisdom. Parts of
the manuscript score are located in Moscow, Weimar and
Nuremberg (where a folio of this work was miscatalogued
for many years, thought to be discarded material from the