PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

subject, neither of which is in his own hand, both have
dotted minim = 116. (Added to which is Beethoven’s
sometime decision to alter in the manuscript the time
values of the whole section by a factor of 2:1.) Now the last
is clearly wrong, since the passage is in duple time, so, if
Beethoven’s dictation to his nephew was at fault, the real
number might have been something else altogether. 116
minims makes a nonsense of the preceding stringendo,
and 116 semibreves is frantically fast. Liszt’s transcriptions
are not playable at this last speed and indicate by their
context some middle course, which is adopted here.
Although Beethoven writes ‘Da capo tutto’ at the end of the
Trio, he really only intends the Scherzo to be repeated and
for the coda to follow.
Apart from his reasonable decision to place the string
pizzicati on an extra stave, not to be played (at bar 85,
where the treacherous solo for the fourth horn begins)
Liszt incorporates a munificent proportion of the material
of this most beautiful of slow movements, and the result is
a piano piece which bears comparison with Beethoven’s
own most wonderfully sustained slow movement for piano
in the Opus 106 Piano Sonata.
Whatever the inadequacies of the transcription of the
finale, it were a terrible thing had Liszt not made the
attempt and left us a three-movement torso. As it stands,
his attempt at the orchestral parts is heroic if distressingly
difficult to execute, and it is actually easier to hear some of
the counterpoint without the vocal distractions, if one may
be permitted a small heresy. It is only at the slower section
(where the choir enters with ‘Seid umschlungen,
Millionen’) that a really divergent reading emerges for
want of the choral parts, and at the end of the Adagio the
orchestral parts give nearly four long bars of the same
repeated harmony without the rhythmic variety that the
choral parts would supply. From the Allegro energico to the
end of the Symphony, even the orchestral parts produce a
terrifying task to reproduce with two hands with any
respectable combination of accuracy and spirit. One more
textual problem: the present performance follows Liszt’s
solo piano text five bars before the Allegro non tanto, in
which he alters Beethoven’s woodwind C naturals at the
first beat to C sharps to agree with the choir and the
strings. He allowed the clash in the two-piano version,
where it is easier to assimilate. No one can establish what
Beethoven wanted since this problem stems from his very
clear (at this point!) manuscript. Most conductors have
either adopted all C naturals or all C sharps at the
beginning of the bar. The clash might have been intended,
and is certainly listenable without being lovable, but it does
not really work on one piano. Liszt will not be thanked for
his uncompromising upward-rushing Prestissimo scales
in thirds at the final choral passage, but the arrangement
of the final orchestral coda is an excellently risky conclusion
to the work, and to Liszt’s whole act of homage
throughout these transcriptions of this greatest canon of
symphonies.
LESLIE HOWARD © 1993
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