PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

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.
A curiosity in the first edition of the Liszt transcription is
that the publisher, when printing the main theme at the
recapitulation, goes beyond the reprise of the first sixteen
bars to add the next sixteen bars as at the beginning. This
is clearly an error, and has nothing to do with Beethoven
or Liszt. In a few places Liszt specifies ‘ossia più difficile’
passages which are not found in the second version, but
which are adopted in this performance.
Fantasie über Motive aus Beethovens Die Ruinen
von Athen für Klavier von F. Liszt (first version)
This title appears in the only edition of the work, in the
excellent Neue Liszt-Ausgabe, but, as that edition makes
clear, the original manuscript contains no page numbers,
title, date or signature. The first half of the work is broadly
the same as the opening of the later, and much longer,
Fantasy published under the present title in 1865 (see
Volume 18, ‘Liszt at the Theatre’), and the remainder is
really just a single variation in grandiose triplets. The
‘Motive’ of the title is a little misleading, since this version
is thus concentrated upon a single number from
Beethoven’s original incidental music (Marsch und Chor,
Op 113/6).
Marche au Supplice de la Sinfonie fantastique (Episode
de la Vie d’un Artiste) de Hector Berlioz transcrite
pour le Piano par François Liszt (final version)
As an addendum to this volume we include the final
edition of the fourth movement of the Symphonie
fantastique with its Introduction, the second edition of the
Idée fixe. The introduction is really an original nocturne
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by Liszt. It is based upon the theme which informs the
whole of Berlioz’s symphony, as well as its sequel, Lélio,
and was first issued in 1846 (although some sources
suggest that there may have been an earlier, untraced
version from 1833), but its final form is much simpler in
shape and texture (see Volume 5, ‘Berlioz, Chopin and
Saint-Saëns Transcriptions’). Strangely, Liszt changes the
tonality from the A major of the first published version to
B major in the present case – neither key being an obvious
choice to introduce a march in G minor. The ‘March to the
Scaffold’ itself has rather a complicated history: Liszt
transcribed the whole symphony in 1833 and it was
published the following year. It was re-engraved with very
minor corrections in 1836 and two further (unchanged)
editions appeared in Liszt’s lifetime. Meanwhile, the fourth
movement appeared separately from the beginning, and
was twice reissued before the present revision was made –
the manuscript, in the Library of Congress (curiously misrendering
the title as ‘Marche du supplice’, as some early
editions of the single movement did) contains only the
altered passages with notes for the engraver referring to
the first version. The replacements are mostly made in the
interests of clarity, and some wide stretches are removed,
and the general effect of the changes is quite similar to that
made between the versions of the Beethoven Symphonies.
(See Volume 10 for the whole of the Symphonie
fantastique.) For some reason, this version has
languished virtually unplayed, even though the movement
itself has been given often enough as an encore, a tradition
which began with Liszt himself.
LESLIE HOWARD © 1997