PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

catalogues’ erroneous suggestions) sets Schlegel’s poem which is the brief autobiography of a rose
which regrets the brevity of its life once in bloom. Liszt turns this simple piece into something of a
symphonic poem in which he captures both the fragility and the underlying passion of the song. The
song Der Gondelfahrer, D808, was probably not known to Liszt (it was not published until 1872), but
the version for men’s chorus and piano, Op 28/D809, likewise written in March 1824, was the basis for
the last and one of the sweetest of Liszt’s Schubert transcriptions. Mayrhofer’s poem tells of a gondolier
pondering the human condition whilst plying his craft through water upon which the ghostly moon and
stars dance, and the clock in St Mark’s strikes midnight. Neither Schubert in his miniature masterpiece,
nor Liszt in a response typical of the lonely restraint of his late manner, gives us twelve strokes, and
Liszt’s mysterious coda allows the clock to strike again and again, disappearing without the comforting
keynote at the root of the final chords.
Sophie Menter (1848–1918) was one of Liszt’s most gifted piano students who toured the world to great
acclaim. Liszt made alterations to several of his published compositions for her personal use: an extra
little cadenza to the Don Giovanni fantasy (see Vol 6, ‘Liszt at the Opera’ I), some excellent
improvements to the Masaniello tarantella (see Vol 42, ‘Liszt at the Opera’ IV), and the two pieces
recorded here. (He also helped her with the composition of a ‘Concerto in the Hungarian Style’ called
Ungarische Zigeunerweisen which was eventually orchestrated by Tchaikovsky in 1892, the actual
composition of which has, in recent times, been quite unreasonably attributed to Liszt himself.) These
manuscript fragments, all preserved in the Library of Congress (whither must go profound thanks for
the use of the material), require adding to the appointed places in the already published editions. In the
case of the Soirées de Vienne there is a note in Liszt’s hand in the margin saying that two bars of one
extended modulation were the idea of Hans von Bülow. In the more far-reaching alterations to the
Marche hongroise Liszt permits himself a new coda, and a quite astonishing rearrangement of key at the
recapitulation of the second theme.
Liszt’s interest in the Schubert marches extended well beyond the Marche hongroise. The three large
piano pieces based upon various Schubert marches for piano duet incorporate much more than face
value might suggest: the extraordinary Trauermarsch, which for sustained sorrow is one of the finest of
all such pieces, is faithfully transcribed from the fifth of the Six grandes marches, Op 40/D819, but
manages to find even greater profundity than in the original text. The Grande marche is derived from
No 3 of the same set but with the addition of a second, slower, trio section which is taken from the
Grande marche funèbre, Op 55/D859, and which theme also returns at the coda. Both Schubert works
share a delightful ability to slide into unorthodox modulations. More formally complicated is the
Grande marche caractéristique which starts out as a transcription of the first of the two marches from
Schubert’s Op posth 121/D886, but after the trio section moves into a transcription of the trio from the
second march from D886. Then follow the first part of No 2 of the D819 set, and the trio from D819/1.
7