PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

Mignons Lied from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister—Kennst
du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn (‘Do you know the
land where the lemons bloom’)—has been set by many a
composer (Liszt made a transcription of Beethoven’s
setting, for example, recorded on volume 15 of the present
series) and Liszt’s setting has proved one of his more
durable songs. The music reflects the growing intensity of
each verse of the poem, and the faster refrain: ‘Dahin!’
(‘Return!’) eventually requires the most impassioned
expression. Goethe’s ballad of the king of Thule and his
golden goblet—the gift of his dying lady love which
brought tears to his eyes whenever he drank from it, and
which he threw into the sea as he was dying rather than
allow it to be inherited—is one of Liszt’s finest dramatic
songs, and the transcription contains no superfluous
decoration. Der du von dem Himmel bist (‘You who are
from Heaven’) is again from Goethe and much beloved of
composers. Subtitled ‘Invocation’, the piece is held
together by a felicitous motif of pair of rising and falling
semiquavers. The last of the collection, actually the firstcomposed
of all the Liszt songs, was originally set in Italian
—Bocella’s poem Angiolin dal biondo crin (‘Little angel
with the golden locks’)—and later issued in German as
‘Englein du mit blondem Haar’. Both titles and the poems
in both languages appear at the head of the piano
transcription. The piece is a very simple love song in six
verses, which becomes almost like a set of variations in the
transcription.
All of the songs chosen for the second songbook are
settings of Victor Hugo, and the first four, at least, have
always been amongst Liszt’s most performed songs. His
setting of the French language came easier to him at first
than German setting, and his melodic style was often more
expansive as a result. In Oh! quand je dors (‘Oh! when I
sleep’) the poet asks for his lover to appear to him as
Laura did to Petrarch. Comment, disaient-ils (‘How? say
the lads’) is one of Liszt’s few songs at an animated tempo
and suits to perfection Hugo’s little dialogue of questions
and answers from the lads to the lasses. Enfant, si j’étais
roi (‘Child, if I were king’)—a marvellous poem of love,
telling first of what the poet would do for the child if he
were king, and if he were God—set by Liszt with real
majesty. S’il est un charmant gazon (‘If it is a charming
green’) is a graceful setting of another love poem whose
conceits are that the poet would like to be the path beneath
the lover’s foot, or a nest for the lover’s heart (the text of
the Liszt transcription presents a few minor problems
towards the end: this performance transposes the right
hand down by an octave in bars 48-56). La tombe et la
rose is an allegorical conversation between a grave and a
rose, each pressing its merits upon the other, the grave’s
final observation being that out of every soul it receives it
makes an angel. Liszt’s intense tremolos and dotted
rhythms make it a powerful piece indeed. Gastibelza is
the song of an eponymous carabiniero in the form of a
bolero-cum-love-song of the man with the rifle who is
made mad by ‘le vent qui vient à travers le montagne’ (‘the
wind that comes over the mountain’). Here Liszt wisely
shortened the number of verses of the original song in
order to make a tighter construction for the piano piece
and a fitting conclusion to the collection as a whole.
LESLIE HOWARD © 1992
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