Franz Liszt (1811-86)

Started by Lethevich, September 28, 2008, 07:11:41 AM

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The new erato

Strangely enough in this anniversary year, I've received notification that this disc is no longer available:


karlhenning

Quote from: The new erato on February 27, 2011, 05:46:07 AM
Strangely enough in this anniversary year, I've received notification that this disc is no longer available:



Oh, that is a pity! A lovely disc.

I've been revisiting the Rapsodies hongroises of late, and (truth to tell, much as I expected) I find there is more variety and creative musical intelligence baked in there, than many give credit for.

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on February 27, 2011, 02:02:36 PM
Oh, that is a pity! A lovely disc.

I've been revisiting the Rapsodies hongroises of late, and (truth to tell, much as I expected) I find there is more variety and creative musical intelligence baked in there, than many give credit for.

Well, of course we don't discuss versions here, I know, but Karl, this is a very nice disk of 6 of the Rapsodies hongroises, which I have been enjoying for years.


[asin]B000007N5L[/asin]

8)


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karlhenning

Oh, you're talking the orchestrated versions of the Rapsodies, Gurn (not that there's aught wrong with 'em). Certainly, Iván Fischer would have my complete confidence.

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on February 27, 2011, 02:54:55 PM
Oh, you're talking the orchestrated versions of the Rapsodies, Gurn (not that there's aught wrong with 'em). Certainly, Iván Fischer would have my complete confidence.

Certainly. I heard the piano versions once and didn't like them nearly as well. Fischer & Co. play the hell out of them here. :)

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karlhenning

FWIW, Gurn, the first I heard the piano solo version, I didn't much care for them, either . . . Even though the pianist was apparently Hungarian, and even though it was a Deutsche Gramophon recording.

I have since seen light, of course
; )

Lethevich

Just a reminder that the Liszt coverage on Wikipedia is really getting out of hand. It's making articles related to other composers look embarassingly poor. Check this one on a single tone poem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_pr%C3%A9ludes_%28Liszt%29

This is why I love the site, all it takes is a few dedicated people (who understand the framework of the site) to build and shepherd articles to produce something impossible to find elsewhere for free.
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on March 13, 2011, 09:27:15 AM
Just a reminder that the Liszt coverage on Wikipedia is really getting out of hand. It's making articles related to other composers look embarassingly poor. Check this one on a single tone poem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_pr%C3%A9ludes_%28Liszt%29

This is why I love the site, all it takes is a few dedicated people (who understand the framework of the site) to build and shepherd articles to produce something impossible to find elsewhere for free.


Cast a quick glance - yes, that looks very professional and exhaustive! Les Préludes is a favourite of mine, so when I have some free time on my hands, I'll read the page with the requisite attention.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

RJR

Quote from: Greg on April 08, 2010, 02:03:32 PM
Did Prokofiev ever look towards Liszt for inspiration?

I know, I'm a year late. Who cares? Bartok was inspired, even revered, Liszt.




ibanezmonster

You might want to try writing outside the quotes. At first, I thought I wrote that second line, and I can't even quote what you just wrote.  :-\

ibanezmonster

Here's a site which is a bit too fanatical about Liszt, but has the praiseworthy aim of giving Liszt the credit he deserves for being one of the most influential and creative composers in the history of music (if not the most):

http://www.d-vista.com/OTHER/franzliszt.html

One good point it makes when comparing Beethoven's influence to Liszt's is that Beethoven's was in a long, straight line of tradition- when Liszt came around, though, he ended up being a main influence for many of the different schools and styles of music.

The new erato

Quote from: RJR on March 26, 2011, 06:11:48 PM
Quote from: Greg on April 08, 2010, 02:03:32 PM
Did Prokofiev ever look towards Liszt for inspiration?


I know, I'm a year late. Who cares? Bartok was inspired, even revered, Liszt.
But then again, Bartok started out an Hungarian nationalist.


Sid

I just listened to Liszt's Dante Symphony last night for the first time & reviewed it on the listening thread. I'm interested in what people think about this work, in particular about the opinion (or what I think as the misguided opinion) of some that it's somewhat inferior to his earlier Faust Symphony:

Quote from: Sid on May 07, 2011, 07:09:41 PM

...I have read comments about the Dante Symphony judging it as being somewhat inferior to the Faust Symphony. Now that I've heard both, I think these opinions are utter rubbish. Both of these are amazing and very innovative works. I also don't agree with some people's opinions that Liszt was not a good orchestrator, or at least not as good as some others of his time. This is preposterous, especially considering that he influenced guys like Wagner, R. Strauss & Debussy in this regard. He could really equal them all, and then some. The last words I will give to another great composer of the time, Saint-Saens (quoted in the LP notes) who said at the time when he conducted an all-Liszt orchestral programme in Paris "The programme was comprised entirely of the orchestral works of Franz Liszt whom the world calls a great pianist in order to avoid acknowledging as one of the greatest composers of our time..."

Lethevich

Something about the perception of Dante as being inferior may be that the tone-row in Faust allows those who don't neccesseraly care for the music all that much to at least claim it to have some "significance" to musical history. Dante may be seen as the opposite, as the Magnificat setting is somewhat kitschy. But it's also an undeniably beautiful moment as well, more so than anything in Faust - I like both about equally although can't claim to listen to either all that often.
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

Sid

#214
Quote from: Lethe Dmitriyevich Shostakovich on May 07, 2011, 07:37:58 PM
Something about the perception of Dante as being inferior may be that the tone-row in Faust allows those who don't neccesseraly care for the music all that much to at least claim it to have some "significance" to musical history. Dante may be seen as the opposite, as the Magnificat setting is somewhat kitschy. But it's also an undeniably beautiful moment as well, more so than anything in Faust - I like both about equally although can't claim to listen to either all that often.

Well, I just read the Wikipedia article about the Dante Symphony, and it says that there are a few 12 note rows throughout the work. Maybe this is harder to hear than in the Faust Symphony? I'm not sure, being only newly familiar to the Dante Symphony. In any case, it's probably much easier to see the row in the score rather than just hear it in the music without a score. I'm not really fixated on the row, but I can understand how this may have become a focus for musicians and musicologists later, particularly with regard to how music developed from the 1850's onwards.

Well, the Magnificat may sound "kitschy" and a bit cheesy to our ears, but I'm sure that it would have been one of the first times (if not the first) that harmonies from Renaissance music were made part of a symphony. I know that Liszt became highly acquainted with Palestrina's music later in Rome during the 1860's after he left Weimar (I have a rare LP recording of the "Szekszard" Mass for men's voices and organ that is highly reminiscent of Palestrina's harmonies). However, listening to the 2nd part of the Dante Symphony, I don't doubt that Liszt was aware of Palestrina's (& perhaps other Renaissance composers') music before he heard it in the flesh in the Vatican.

It actually took me 12-18 months to appreciate A Faust Symphony more deeply, but I think that I'll come round to the Dante Symphony much quicker now given my familiarity with the eariler symphony. What strikes me when listening to these symphonies is just how pared down and lean the orchestration often is, it sometimes sounds very un-Romantic and more Twentieth Century - Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, Debussy and even Messiaen sometimes come to mind. Maybe fleetingly amongst some of the more overtly Romantic sounding bits, but the innovation is still there, and can clearly be heard. Indeed, it is what kind of initially put me off the Faust Symphony, just like with my first encounter with Schoenberg's music, I found it a bit colourless and bland. Now, I can hear nothing but colour and subtlety in both Liszt's and Schoenberg's music. If Liszt's music struck me, a listener of today, as a bit difficult and harder to grasp than say Brahms or even Wagner, then I wonder what the audiences of his time would have thought? I'd say the majority of them would have simply balked in a big way. It's really only the fellow musicians like Saint-Saens, Berlioz and Wagner that recognised the genius of Liszt's writing in many of the genres he composed in - not only solo piano, but orchestral, choral and chamber music as well. Brahms even sent Liszt the manuscript of one of his piano concertos to apparently lure the Hungarian back onto the stage as a soloist after he'd been retired for many years in that department (eventually, one of Liszt's piano students premiered that Brahms concerto). In a way in his time, apart from having a kind of "film star" status as a pianist, he was really a "musician's musician" only fully appreciated by his peers. The majority of the public only knew him as a great & sensational pianist, but his peers had a much deeper understanding of his art in it's totality...

Scarpia

Listened to the Faust Symphony for the first time today, Masur's recording, which I found to be very good.  The outer movements had immediate appeal, and I like the fact that Liszt's themes are very recognizable, so it easy to feel that you have some ability to navigate the three rather long movements, even if further insights will come from repeated listenings.  My main gripe at this point is the choral ending to the final movement, which I find to be a cop-out.  I've read in various sets of notes that the original version had a purely orchestral finale (as well as lighter orchestration throughout) and I wish that someone would perform and record that version as well.


abidoful

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on May 08, 2011, 11:24:37 AM
Listened to the Faust Symphony for the first time today, Masur's recording, which I found to be very good.  The outer movements had immediate appeal, and I like the fact that Liszt's themes are very recognizable, so it easy to feel that you have some ability to navigate the three rather long movements, even if further insights will come from repeated listenings.  My main gripe at this point is the choral ending to the final movement, which I find to be a cop-out.  I've read in various sets of notes that the original version had a purely orchestral finale (as well as lighter orchestration throughout) and I wish that someone would perform and record that version as well.
I'm not sure if it has been recorded but I remember hearing on YouTube an purely instrumental version of the ending. But I must say the vocal version is just magnifiscent IMO!!

karlhenning

Characteristic of Liszt, there are versions of the Faust Symphony with or without a chorus (and tenor solo) in the last movement.

Florestan

Quote from: Il Barone Scarpia on May 08, 2011, 11:24:37 AM
My main gripe at this point is the choral ending to the final movement, which I find to be a cop-out. 

Could you please elaborate a bit? What exactly do you feel it's wrong with the choral part?
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Scarpia

Quote from: Florestan on May 09, 2011, 05:17:13 AM
Could you please elaborate a bit? What exactly do you feel it's wrong with the choral part?

After 70 minutes of glorious tone-painting of the characters in the story I don't see why that extremely successful procedure has to stop and be replaced by recitation of an unintelligible text.