PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

Similarly, the ‘Shepherds’ Song. Joyful, thankful feelings
after the storm’ finds Liszt at one with Beethoven’s spirit.
In the matter of the text there is one serious blip at bar 225
where Liszt does not pick up a mistakenly transcribed
harmony from his first version: he has a simple dominant
seventh where he ought to have an F instead of an E.
(The F is restored in the present reading.) Whereas it is
a conscious decision of Liszt’s to make a clean final
cadence and sacrifice the last falling semiquavers of the
basses.
11
Symphony No 7 in A major Op 92 (second version)
Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 was completed in 1812 and
dedicated to Landgrave Moritz von Fries. Liszt made his
transcription of it by early 1838. (At that stage Liszt was
prepared to transcribe just the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and
Third Symphonies, and in fact only produced the first
three of these. Just the second movement of the ‘Eroica’
followed in 1841, and the remainder was not put in train
until 1863.) Like the early versions of the transcriptions of
the Fifth and Sixth, the Seventh was dedicated to Ingres.
This first version was published in 1843 and a copy of it
was the basis for the second version, which was made in
1863 and dedicated, like the whole series, to Hans von
Bülow. As with the similar cases of the Fifth and Sixth
Symphonies, the two versions make interesting comparison,
but the second version, as recorded here,
eliminates some technical details which, although faithful
to Beethoven’s text, obscure matters in performance. The
Seventh remains one of the most difficult of Liszt’s
transcriptions.
The mighty introduction somehow emerges with its full
stature, even though many elements have to be transposed
up or down an octave in order for all the lines to fit within
the mortal compass of the hand. If the spirit of the dance
informs Beethoven’s Vivace it becomes quite a highkicking
affair in Liszt’s arrangement where the leap is the
predominant step, to such an extent that one often seems
to be playing in three different registers of the piano at
once, especially in the coda.
As with so many of the slow movements, Liszt’s version
of the Allegretto is a masterpiece of the transcriber’s art. In
every variant of the melody after the countermelody has
joined in there are at least two disparate things which must
be managed by the right hand, whilst everything else must
somehow be reached by the left. And although Liszt has to
resort to octave transpositions from time to time he does a
marvellous job of keeping everything going, even in the
treacherous fugato.
Whether or not one attempts the ossia passages, the
Scherzo remains a prodigious piece of pyrotechnics—just
as it is for the orchestra. These alternatives come at every
bar where Beethoven has a trill in the original. Liszt begins
the trill and ends with an arpeggiated Nachschlag which
spirits the line to the upper octave for each answering bar.
The resulting colours are well worth the effort, even
though the nine consecutive trills at the end of the Scherzo
are not for the faint-hearted. The repeat from bar 148 back
to bar 25 is respected by Liszt, if not by many a contemporary
conductor.
One of the greatest alterations between the two versions
of Liszt’s transcription concerns the Trio, which is given
very grandly in the first version but approached with a
much simpler attitude in the present version, even leaving
out Beethoven’s octave doublings until the fortissimo
shortly before the Scherzo and Trio are repeated entire
(save the ritornelli).
The finale, like the first movement, requires a good
deal of stamina but manages to convey just the right
rumbustious atmosphere. The few proposed simpler alternatives
are of so little respite in the face of the general
order of things that they are best ignored, as here.