PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

allowed the boy to write such wonderful music as the ninth
Etude of this set at the age of 14, and at how he ever came
to write the mighty melody of Mazeppa over the decorative
patterns of the fourth Etude. All but one of these early
pieces were transformed into the later set. (Why Liszt did
not use No 11 remains a mystery. The theme of No 7 was
transposed into D flat and moved to No 11, while the
introduction to the Opus 3 Impromptu was joined to a new
work to make the later No 7.) The original plan, no doubt
in deference to Bach’s ‘48’ which Liszt had known from a
schoolboy, was to write 48 studies (the original edition was
announced as Étude en quarante-huit exercises) going
twice through all the keys. As is clear from the pieces
completed, the scheme was to go backwards through the
cycle of fifths, interpolating all the relative minor keys.
Thus, the set of twelve is perforce entirely in the ‘flat’ keys.
The piano piece in G minor bo , long known as Scherzo
(thanks to Busoni’s edition of 1927) but not so entitled by
Liszt, dates from 1827. However, the piece is not so much
a Scherzo as a Bagatelle, in the Beethovenian sense, and it
is easy to read into its craggy jauntiness a homage to
Beethoven: in the sprung rhythms and awkward leaps, in
the clever manipulation of the diminished seventh (such a
characteristic of his later work) and in the throwing of the
theme across the keyboard, the old master is evoked. But
it is probably coincidental that the piece dates from
around the time of Beethoven’s death.
The manuscript of the Two Hungarian Recruiting
Dances bp bq is of particular interest because it is Liszt’s
earliest surviving attempt at capturing elements of
Hungarian musical style. The title by which the catalogues
usually refer to the pieces, Zum Andenken, is part of the
signature at the end. Unfortunately the manuscript is
dreadfully messy, and the structure of the piece, in terms
of what should be repeated, where the da capo should go
to, and so on, is by no means clear. The edition by Elyse
4
Mach, which reproduces the MS, and that in the Neue
Liszt-Ausgabe are at considerable variance from each
other, and the MS cannot resolve all the difficulties. The
present performance, then, takes account of these sources
whilst offering a slightly different solution from that
proposed by the N L-A. It seems from the way Liszt treated
the themes of these two minor composers that he had
probably just overheard them and did not know their
provenance. Certainly, the original sources and titles of the
melodies were only revealed by the indefatigable editors of
the N L-A.
The following eleven pieces vary from tiny trifles to
elaborately worked-out compositions, but they were
generally not intended for concert use and frequently
employ themes from other of Liszt’s original works.
Liszt made three trips to the British Isles: in 1826,
1840/41, and 1886. The very day he arrived in 1840 he
penned (and dated, without entitling it) the Waltz in E flat
br, which is effectively an album-leaf made from the
second theme of the Grande Valse de bravoure, but in a
version part-way between the two published versions of the
whole work. In this form there is the added attraction of
finishing in quite the wrong key. The coda of the same
waltz supplied the material for the slight Galop de Bal bs.
The Marche hongroise bt turned up in Russia and,
apart from the autograph date and its information that the
piece was written in Marly (and our presumption that the
theme is Liszt’s own), we know nothing more about it.
The fund-raising for a monument to Beethoven in the
town of his birth might never have come to fruition
without Liszt’s extraordinary generosity. He contributed an
enormous amount of money (from the takings of his
concert tours during that period when he seemed
determined to play two concerts per day, seven days a
week), laid on accommodation, refreshments and musical
entertainment in the form of a large cantata for soloists,