PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

he salvaged to introduce the E flat major study of the 1838
set, and then eventually transformed that into Eroica in
the Transcendental Etudes.
The two concertos which Liszt published were, at the
draft stage, originally accompanied by a third, although its
provenance is a little earlier. Liszt kept making small
improvements to the drafts but, at a time and for a reason
unknown, abandoned one of the works which, like the
famous No 1, is in E flat major. He proceeded gradually to
bring the two remaining pieces up to their present state.
The discarded concerto is quite playable, thanks to the
painstaking research of Jay Rosenblatt who re-assembled it
after it had been dispersed about Europe on the careless
assumption that it was a set of discarded sketches for the
Concerto No 1. The score discloses the phenomenon that
is encountered with the Transcendental Etudes: that Liszt
returned to his juvenilia to provide himself with a
springboard to new music. Along with the theme from the
Opus 1 Variations, the Concerto uses in many guises the
first theme of the Allegro di bravura 7 and one motif
from the Rondo di bravura 8 generates one of the
principal themes. That said, it has to be admitted that
these early showpieces which form the young Liszt’s Opus
4 are rather experimental in the matter of form, and
almost clumsy in some of their technical requirements.
The style recalls Hummel and Czerny—two influences
present in Liszt’s early opera and in the following studies.
An attempt by Liszt to orchestrate the Allegro was
abandoned, although he was confidently orchestrating his
opera within a year.
Just as it is now almost impossible to listen to the first
Prelude of Bach’s ‘48’ without Gounod’s Ave Maria
creeping unbidden into the brain, so the Etudes
d’exécution transcendante overshadow our listening to
Liszt’s Opus 6 1, but not offensively, and we find
ourselves marvelling by turns at the precocity which
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LISZT IN 1838