PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

chords are replaced with a coda much more reminiscent of the style of the old Liszt. The
alternative passages in the versions of Rapsodie hongroise X 3 and Rapsodie hongroise XV 4
recorded here are to do with the replacement of difficult glissandi with other material. But the
effect is not simply that of facilitation; the ossia texts also offer real musical changes. Rapsodie
hongroise XVI 5 is given in its original version: Liszt had it published, with the title and his
name in Hungarian (as he preferred it in his last years); he very soon reissued it with several
additions and changes (see Volume 57). Liszt made two attempts at a conclusion to the delightful
and all-too-brief Rapsodie hongroise XVIII which remain in manuscript. They are both
recorded here (tracks 6, 8), separated by the Mephisto-Polka 7. The Polka has two texts: one,
as performed on this occasion, simple and direct in its language; the alternative (Volume 28) so
replete with decorative ossia passages as to sound almost another work altogether.
The remainder of this disc is devoted to fragments of various kinds: the effect as a recital will no
doubt be strange, but the music, however partially worked out, remains intrinsically compelling.
The Cadenzas to Un sospiro 9 were written for Luisa Cognetti and Eduard Dannreuther in the
mid-1880s and may be compared with three others (Volume 38) all designed to be inserted at the
same point of the study: before the recapitulation. Three Album-Leaves follow: the one the
catalogues list as Poco adagio aus der Graner Messe is an excerpt from the Agnus Dei of the
composer's Missa Solemnis, S9 bl; the next presents a strangely misquoted version of the
principal theme from the symphonic poem Orpheus bm; and the third, although marked in the
manuscript as an excerpt from the symphonic poem Die Ideale bn, is actually laid out in a way
which more closely resembles the trio section of the Künstlerfestzug, whence the theme in
question derives (see above).
The fifteen tracks which follow do not account for every last known Liszt sketch for the piano.
There are hundreds of such things relating to works which he later completed, and to record all
of them would be otiose in the extreme. Instead we present fragments known from published
catalogues, or pieces which remained incomplete elsewhere.
The unfinished oratorio St Stanislaus consists mostly of more-or-less completed numbers (see
Volume 14, for example), but there is a tantalizing fragment in the Library of Congress which is
worth preserving in sound bo. There may once have been more of the stirring Winzerchor
(Winnowers' Chorus from the Prometheus choruses) bp since the manuscript ends at the end of a
very full page which continues from the Schnitterchor transcription.
11