At the suggestion of his publisher Breitkopf & Härtel, Liszt revisited the Beethoven Symphonies with the goal of completing all nine for publication. He completed the Third symphony in 1843, but then set the transcriptions aside for nearly two decades. Liszt started transcribing Beethoven’s symphonies in the 1830s, having finished the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh symphonies by 1837. Musicologist Alan Walker, who dedicated most of his scholarly efforts to Liszt, believed that these transcriptions are “arguably the greatest work of transcription ever completed in the history of music.” If you know Liszt’s piano works this comes as no surprise (“La Campanella” comes to mind). Many musicologists, critics, and performers agree that Liszt’s Beethoven Symphonies S.464 are quite possibly the most technically difficult piano pieces ever composed. For Liszt, these transcriptions showcased the capabilities of modern piano design but he also used them as an opportunity to share these celebrated pieces on his tours of smaller communities in the farthest reaches of Europe, where access to symphony orchestras was rare, if not entirely nonexistent. Liszt was an incredibly well-connected man: he studied with Czerny, taught Hans von Bülow, socialized with Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna, drew inspiration from Paganini, was admired by Berlioz, championed the music of Richard Wagner (who married his daughter Cosima) and shared moments of his final years with Claude Debussy.
Liszt transcribed everything from song to opera, often written by the many composers he met in his life. For Liszt, the goal of transcribing an orchestral piece for piano was not just to create a reduction of the score, which would overly simplify the music, but to remain as true to the original as possible, which often meant Liszt’s transcriptions were technically demanding (fitting for a performer of his ilk). Transcribing, the art of reformulating an existing composition to a new ensemble or instrument, is not as straightforward as it might sound. By weaving together his prowess as a pianist and his creativity as a composer, Liszt discovered a musical niche which would set him apart from other composers during the nineteenth century: piano transcriptions. While there is no doubt Liszt’s letter ruffled the feathers of his symphony colleagues, Liszt understood the tremendous potential of the piano in a way that no other composer or performer before him had ever realized. One notable performance in 1838 of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata, widely recognized at the time as “incoherent” and “unplayable,” caught the ear of Hector Berlioz, who had never heard Beethoven’s infamous sonata performed with such excellence. What made Liszt’s virtuosity so profound was how well he handled exceptionally technical music. By 1830, Liszt was an exceptionally talented pianist and, after attending a benefit concert hosted by Niccolo Paganini, he dedicated himself to becoming an equal virtuoso on the piano to Paganini on the violin. There, he studied piano with Carl Czerny before moving to Paris in 1827 where he refined his skills further. By 1820 he was performing public concerts that caught the ear of wealthy donors who paid for him to continue his piano studies in Vienna. Franz Liszt, oil on canvas by Henri Lehmann, 1840 in the Carnavalet Museum, Paris.īorn in 1811, Liszt began playing the piano when he was seven years old. In a letter written in 1837 to his fellow musicians prior to a tour, Franz Liszt stated that the piano should place at the “top of the hierarchy of instruments,” in large part because of its ability to capture the entire “scope of the orchestra,” and replicate the “harmony of 100 players.” Though for Liszt the orchestra was the vehicle for his most innovative compositional contributions, namely the symphonic poem, the piano lies at the heart of Liszt’s life as a composer and performer. Christopher Taylor Program Notes by Jonathan Minnick
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