Franz Liszt - recommendations

Bert, I'm so glad that you brought up this subject.  One of the most prolific and important artists of the 19th century and sadly, often criticized by those who typically fall for stereotypes or generally just do not know much of his music beyond a few overplayed and often abused top 10 tracks.

Before I give some recommendations, I would ask which Franz Liszt would you be interested in knowing?  I'm simplifying and generalizing here but you could roughly say Liszt had three distinct periods in his life and the early period could not be more different than the late period.  

I'd say his youth until about age 35 distinguished him as one of the first rock stars if I could say that.    Good looking, charismatic, and a real ladies man with woman falling at his feet he established himself as an uncontested virtuoso of the piano.  His middle years turned him more into a true romantic with the woman as he travelled around in search of the meaning of many things.  In the late years he retreated to Rome to live a contemplative solitary life in a monastery.  Here his music is sparse and is a real precursor for some 20th century composers already.

As I said, all three periods were quite distinctive.  If you want to know how prolific he was, Hyperion was the first to record his complete piano works and some statistics from that show just under 100 CD's totalling more than 117 hours from 16,000 pages of music with between 9 and 10 million notes.  (Queue in the resident Statler & Waldorf who would say something like that's 9 or 10 million notes too many).

Honestly, once you dig into it I'm sure you'd find something you would like.  I'm in that strange category of having heard all of his music so very difficult for me to recommend just one thing.

The first thing most people would say in the B minor Sonata, the Transcendental Etudes, the three sets from The Years of Pilgrimage, the Liebestraum, the Hungarian Rhapsodies, Operatic transcriptions, the Beethoven Symphonies transcriptions, some Bach organ preludes/fugues, etc. etc..  This is just the tip of the iceberg from so much music to recommend.  I personally find his transcriptions truly invaluable and find the Schubert lieder very remarkable as well as the Magyar Dalok, Magyar Rapszodiak, Album d'un voyageur, the Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen Zagen variations or the prelude, the Ballades, the A La Chapelle Sixtine  (Miserere d' Allegri and Ave verum corpus from Mozart.)

Another all time favourite of mine is Harmonies poetiques et religieuses.

Anyway, I have to stop myself before I put everything in my head down.  Probably start with the Sonata, Etudes, Years of Pilgrimage, and then try some late Liszt like La lugubre gondola or Unstern! Sinistre or Nuages gris.  Also, I'd highly recommend a disc of the Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 and Totentanz - all pretty standard stuff.  

Just to temper my enthusiasm I would qualify that obviously this music is not for everyone.  It depends where you have been and where you want to go.  If you give an indication of what style or period you may find the interest in then I could throw some additional or more specific recommendations.

Regards,

Doug

Bert,

Some of my favorite Liszt solo piano discs are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yt_3dSgUUQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RyoK8rw4Sw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvnoymDZfAU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYU66NGjPtY

Regards,

Haim

Looking forward to hear her B Minor Sonata live in a few weeks!

My favourite is this private live recording done in the 40s.

Tempo drops and more contemplative than his youthful earlier set. Much bolder and daring in moves with a commanding stage presence. Slow passages are rendered with a fewer words with an excellent use of stolen time. Amazing that the recording captured the tremendous dynamics of Horowitz paying. Above average historical recording.

This Rick Wakeman cover is pretty amusing. It's so horribley dated but can be fun.

It's definitely kitsch.

I like his Beethoven Symphony 5 transcription played by Gould.

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your extensive help in this matter. It's more difficult for me to give you a clue as I like a lot of different style period of piano music. I would only exclude some of the modern experimental stuff - but I am in for quite a lot of the other stuff. In piano music I tend to avoid music in which the player needs to torture the instrument. I would definitely appreciate some recommendation from you with regards to some specific recordings, as the Leslie Howard set is an attractive idea - but potentially to much as I would never ever have time to go through it completely.

Regards,

Bert

A very good complete Annee de Pelerinage.

highly recommended

cheers

March 4 in Salle Pleyel (Paris)

Bert,

In my first post I just wanted to give you a sense of two things:  the vastness and scope of his output and the different styles or periods of his life.  I like it from beginning to end but I doubt most people would.  Liszt is a major player for me and so I devote my time and money accordingly.  Unless you are a pianist or very interested I wouldn't recommend the Howard set.  Like you say, it would overwhelm you.  I wish I would be coming around to buying many of these things now as I see it is in a box set now.  When I was buying those at full price like once a month for more than a decade at full price the difference is that I paid more than 10 times what the box set is now.

With Liszt I think the danger is that there are as many interpretations as players (and that is good).  By danger I mean that you may hear something and not like it because maybe you don't connect with the interpreter.  There are so many interpretations it would be impossible for me to recommend all of them or find the ones that suit you.  So anything I recommend here is not that I think it is the best but just these are the first 5 or 6 discs I pulled off my shelf of hundreds.

So not sure how to introduce anyone to Liszt (or any composer) this is what I might do.  If you are unsure completely about the music and don't know if you might like this music or not start with a few single discs of Liszt recitals.  Usually they give a somewhat broad range of styles and diversity.  The problem is with these as it seems most artists stick with the top 10 hits if you know what I mean.  You start to see the same old war horses repeated.  Not the end goal for me but it is a fair place to start.

If you find a connection with the music then find some sets that offer say 5 or 10 discs and you will be introduced to a fair body of work.  So from the single discs you may find you liked a piece that belongs to a set of larger scope you might hear complete in these box sets.  From here you either say you had enough or you keep pursuing more in depth the styles or periods of Liszt's life that interest you.

Just a comment on the interpretations.  Yes, you will find such a range of interpretations - some conservative and some passionate and some even on the wild side.  I think he wrote music to fill in each slot.  As a pianist I like his music for this very reason - there is music to align with most every human emotion and a lot of it goes right to the heart.  Unfortunately, some of the more virtuosic period is very very difficult to play and as a result there are very few around that have both the chops and the understanding / maturity to delivery a satisfying performance.  As a pianist though I see the value in and marvel at the music just for its shear creativity and ability to translate emotion through a musical instrument.  To feel it through your finger tips is what sells me.  It is as satisfying and fun for me to play something intellectual as it is on the other end of the scale to test the limits of the instrument and myself with a physical right pounding of an instrument.  If you are into exercise and sports you'll know what I mean in regards to the physicality and the feeling of elation after pushing yourself beyond your limits. 

So, a few single discs if you want a broad introduction to some piano music for the uninitiated.  Again, I'm not picking these as the best or anything like that.  Merely to give you a few examples of middle of the road recitals to expose you if you are searching to find what suits you.

Nelson Freire

Janina Fialkowska

Nikolai Lugansky

Lise de la salle

Volodos

Lilyz Zilberstein

Polina Leschenko

OK, you don't need these all.  You'll start to see the same pieces across these discs already so I'll stop.  The Volodos will give you slightly more of the later works type of style.  The Leschenko is like Martha Argerich on steroids with the most temperament here probably.

To the above you could add any disc by Hamelin, Hough, Lortie, Buniatishvili (already mentioned elsewhere so I left off), Osborne, Kissin, Wild, Richter, Cziffra, Ovchinikov and not the least -->*Lazar Berman*<--

If you want to get more exposure then the following small box sets would be ideal.  These in themselves would probably cover everything you might need in Liszt and my top three picks?

Jorge Bolet

Claudio Arrau

Alfred Brendel

Hope I did not overwhelm you Bert and I really hope you find something in here that grabs you.  If you get a Brendel or Arrau set you will get some of the concertos and such and I think this is a good thing too that goes hand in hand with the solo works.  It is good exercise music along with the etudes etc.

Maybe later on you can comment on what you like or don't like and we can continue on more specifically.

Enjoy,

Doug