Ferenc Liszt Works for Violin and Piano, Vol 1

DORIAN RECORDINGS: DOR-90251

RACHEL BARTON, VIOLIN
THOMAS LABÉ, PIANO

FERENC LISZT (1811-1886) WORKS FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO BY LESLIE HOWARD

This recording is the first of a projected pair which will contain all of the music – virtually unknown to modern audiences – which Liszt composed for violin and piano (barring untraced manuscripts), leavened with one or two pieces for solo piano.

Even if all of the vast catalogue of his piano music were not included, Liszt’s output in all other fields would still rank him amongst the most prolific of nineteenth-century composers. As one might expect from such an unconventional and avant garde figure, his chamber music is a body of work which defies easy classification. Because Liszt very seldom used standard formal structures and titles, and because he participated in very few performances, his quite considerable achievements in the realm of chamber music have either remained overlooked or discounted without examination. With the exception of some of the works for violin and piano, Liszt’s chamber music consists either of alternative versions or transcriptions of works which exist for other forces. (Liszt made quite a number of instrumental versions of works originally conceived for solo piano, and he authorised, amended and collaborated with several arrangements by his students and disciples.)

But this does not mean that the medium is mishandled in any way; Liszt’s skill and originality as an orchestrator shows many a passage of the most delicate writing for just a few instruments (consider for example just the slow movement Gretchen – from the Faust Symphony with its extended passages for, in one instance, oboe and solo viola, and in another, four solo violins), and Liszt’s unparalleled ability as a transcriber between a great variety of media is universally acclaimed. Nonetheless, Liszt was the last composer who could have been expected to turn out a body of chamber music in the established classical forms – that was a task which was gladly turned to by most of his more conservative contemporaries.

Of course, the relative obscurity of the chamber music is also due to Liszt’s reticence in his later years to do much to propagate his own works, and to the sheer difficulty nowadays of locating some of those unpublished pieces mentioned in passing by his students and colleagues. At the time of writing, there are more than thirty chamber works of Liszt to hand, of which only one or two are at all widely known.

Because the published catalogues of Liszt’s works are generally so poorly laid out and fraught with error it is uncommon to see exactly what his endeavours in the field of chamber music actually are. Where the titles of the works are identical to piano pieces it must not be assumed that no significant musical changes have been made; Liszt was an inveterate reviser, and couldn’t help setting down new ideas even when his original intention might have been to make a literal transcription. So this list (which neglects missing or incomplete manuscripts) is interposed here in the hope that interested parties might take up the works (which are all published, or else available through the Liszt Society of England).

STRING QUARTET

Angelus! (with optional double bass)
Am Grabe Richard Wagners (with optional harp)

PIANO TRIO

Rapsodie hongroise no. 9 – Le Carnaval de Pest
Trista – La Vallée d’Obermann (in 3 versions)
Orphée (arr. by Saint-Saëns with some contributions from Liszt)

VIOLIN AND PIANO

Duo
Grand Duo concertant
Epithalam
La Notte
Première Élégie (with optional organ/harmonium)
Zweite Elegie
La lugubre gondola
Romance oubliée
Offertorium
Benedictus
Rapsodie hongroise (with Joachim’s collaboration)
Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth
Die drei Zigeuner

VIOLIN AND ORGAN

Offertorium
Benedictus

VIOLA AND PIANO

Romance oubliée
Harold en Italie (Berlioz)

CELLO AND PIANO

Première Élégie (with optional organ/harmonium)
Zweite Elegie
Romance oubliée
La lugubre gondola
Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth
Enchainement (between Consolations nos. 1 & 4 arr. by Jules de Swert)

TROMBONE AND ORGAN

Dantico del sol di San Francesco d’Assisi (also with piano)
Hosannah!
Cujus animam (Rossini)

VOICE, VIOLIN AND PIANO

Walther von der Vogelweide

The size of this list reflects a serious of intermittent concern with chamber music, which begins with the violin and piano Duo and ends some fifty years later with Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, and a very fair percentage of the music is scored for violin and piano.

Benedictus und Offertorium aus der ungarischer Krönungsmesse, S381 (1869)

The Abbé Liszt has always been a familiar figure. Even though Liszt took only the four minor orders in 1865, and thus never became a priest (although he was later made Canon of Albano), his preoccupation with religious thought actually goes right back to his teenage years. The Missa coronationalis (usually called the Hungarian Coronation Mass) is the last of Liszt’s four masses, and like his other orchestral mass, the Missa solemnis (for the consecration of the basilica at Esztergom (Gran)), was very popular for a time. The Benedictus and Offertorium (an orchestral movement added after the first performance) were especially successful, and Liszt made arrangements of them for piano, for organ, for violin and organ, as well as for violin and piano. As in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Liszt’s original scoring of the Benedictus call for a solo violin, and the fiddle writing is particularly grateful, and the bold Hungarian cadences of the Offertorium are equally well-suited.

Grand Duo concertant sur la romance de M. Lafont Le Marin, S128 (mid 1830s, rev. c1849, published 1852)

Unlike the earlier Duo, which appeared posthumously, in a much bowdlerised edition, Liszt certainly saw the Grand Duo concertante through the press. He had composed the work during his Paris years, but during his early months in Weimar he put the work into shape for publication by Schott in Mainz. It is based on a song (The Sailor) by the violinist and composer Philippe Lafont (1781-1839), and Lafont perhaps collaborated in some way in the original work. The deft handling of the virtuoso violin writing and the thoroughly light-hearted and agreeable nature of the whole conception make the piece a strong contender for much more frequent airings than it actually receives. Simply constructed – a fantasy introduction, the theme, four variations and a finale – the distinguishing feature is the ease with which delicate virtuosity is passed between the players, and even the grandest gestures are carefully shared. Not for Liszt the grisly habit of the nineteenth-century violin-virtuoso composers who confined so much of the musical interest to the violin part that the piano was left emasculatedly strumming along but interjecting some ghastly ritornello after each variation.

Romance oubliée, S132 (1880)

Liszt composed a song-like Romance for piano in 1848 (S169), based on his earlier son O pourquoi donc of 1843 (S301a). The piano piece was not reprinted in Liszt lifetime, but in 1880 Liszt was sent a copy by the Hanover publisher Arnold Simon, who requested permission to reprint it. Liszt responded instead with a re-working which constitutes almost a wholly new work – in versions for viola and piano, then cello/piano, violin/piano and piano solo. One does not need to know the earlier work to appreciate the wistful quality of the writing – a distracted look at the past, similar in ethos to the four Valses oubliées for piano from the 1880s. And the beautiful coda is a deliberate reference to the end of the second movement of Berlioz’s symphony for viola and orchestra Iharold en Italie, a reminder that the viola version of the Romance oubliée came first!

Die drei Zigeuner, S383 (c1864-71)

Liszt’s well-known song of the three gypsies was composed in 1860 to a poem by Nicolaus Lenau. Almost a Hungarian Rhapsody for voice and piano, the song describes the three: the first fiddling carefree, the second lazily watching the smoke from his pipe, and the third listening to the strings of his cimbalon rustling in the wind. Liszt made the present version for violin and piano, probably for Reményi, but it was not until Hubay took it up (and later extended it) that it enjoyed any real popularity. The arrangement remained unpublished until 1896.

Epithalam zu Eduard Reményis Vermählungsfeier, S129 (1872)

Epithalam, as the title suggests, is a wedding-song, composed for the great Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi (1830-1898) (for whom Liszt’s unfinished violin concerto was intended) upon the occasion of his marriage with Gizella Fáy. Liszt also made versions of the piece for solo piano and for piano duet. This strangely solemn epithalamium is distinguished by some noble and restrained musical Hungarianisms which are a far cry from the flamboyant gestures of the famous Hungarian Rhapsodies.

Élégie, S130 (Première Élégie) (1874)

The Élégie – usually called Première Élégie in order to distinguish it from the second elegy – was composed in memory of Marie Moukhanoff-Kalergis, a patroness of both Liszt and Wagner. According to the original manuscript and several of Liszt’s letter is mid-1974, the original title for the piece was Schlummerlied im Grabe (Lullaby in the Grave), but by the publication date 1875, the title had been altered to Élégie. From the correspondence, it seems that the piano solo version came first, but was shortly followed by the version for cello, piano, harp and harmonium which was given in Weimar on 22nd May, 1875, at a concert in memory of Mme. Moukhanoff. The version for cello and piano was arrived at simply by dispensing with the harp and harmonium parts, and the version for violin and piano, with optional harmonium was prepared at the same time. There is also a version for piano duet. All five versions were published by Kahnt in 1875.

CREDITS

Recorded at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, NY
February 28 – March 2, 1997
Violin: Antonio & Hieronymous Amati, 1617 “ex-Lobkowicz”
Session Producer: Debbie ReynoldsEngineers: Craig D. Dory, Douglas Brown, David H. Walters
Piano Technician: Robert Lee
Post-Session Producer & editor: Debbie Reynolds
Booklet Preparation & Editing: Katherine A. Dory
Graphic Design: Kimberly Smith Company
Executive Producer: Brian M. Levine

With special thanks to Paul Philips, Don Draganski, Andy Mao, Lee Newcomer, Blair Milton, Ruben Gonzalez, Sarah Barton, Greg Pine and Marcia and Findley Cockrell.

A NOTE ON THE RECORDING

This recording, like all Dorian Recordings discs, was produced with no dynamic-range compression using Dorian’s custom record electronics, our one-of-a-kind 20-bit analog-to-digital converters and minimal microphony. The dynamic structure of the original performance has been preserved in this recording such that the natural musical dynamics, from pianissimo to fortissimo, are reproduced fully and accurately. This does not mean that the recording was made at a level different from conventional recordings. Rather, since the maximum dynamic level of all CDs is fixed and the dynamic range of this recording is wider than with conventional recordings, its average playback level might appear to be at a different level than the average level of other recordings. Simply adjust the volume control on your audio playback system so that average dynamic levels are reproduced at a comfortable listening level, and this recording will yield the full spectrum of sound with startling clarity and full dynamic resolution and impact.