12/5/2023 0 Comments Franz list songsBut later versions are not necessarily better: Liszt’s desire in his twenties and thirties to challenge previous conceptions of song and the thrilling virtuosity of the earlier works (no amateurs allowed) make them an irresistible magnet for musicians. He would later disparage the songs of the 1840s, telling Bettine von Arnim in April 1853 that ‘My early songs are mostly too sentimentally bloated and often excessively choked up in the accompaniments’, and he would revise or entirely rewrite many of them. Liszt and Schubert shared a similar urge to revise or recompose prior works, and many of Liszt’s songs exist in multiple versions. According to August Stradal, one of his piano students in the last years, Liszt’s final endeavour was the orchestration of his ballad Die Vätergruft shortly before his death on 31 July 1886. He began delving into the genre by transcribing Schubert’s Lieder as virtuosic solo piano works (one song in 1833, many more in 1835–9), before composing his first song, Angiolin dal biondo crin, in 1839, when he was travelling with his mistress Marie d’Agoult in Italy. From their words he created songs that changed the very definition of the genre, that are a bridge to such later masters as Hugo Wolf, Sergei Rachmaninov and Richard Strauss. A cosmopolitan artist who travelled prodigiously during his years as a virtuoso performer from 1838 to 1847, he chose song texts written both by denizens of Mount Olympus (Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Hugo, Tennyson, Tolstoy, Petrarch) and amateurs, the latter often aristocrats from Liszt’s glittering social circles. A collaborator with some of Europe’s best singers, such as the great French tenor Adolphe Nourrit and the husband–wife duo of Feodor and Rosa von Milde (the first Elsa and Telramund in Wagner’s Lohengrin), Liszt used song as a compositional laboratory in which to experiment with ‘Zukunftsmusik’, or ‘music of the future’, including some of his most finely wrought works. For well over a century, Liszt’s songs were considered insignificant against the vast bulk of his compositions in larger genres, but we know better than that now. ‘My orphaned songs’, Franz Liszt once called his repertory of art-songs in six languages (German, French, English, Hungarian, Italian, Russian) when he was expressing the hope that singers might take these works under their wings. ‘If a few singers could be found … who would boldly venture to sing songs by the notorious non-composer Franz Liszt, they would probably find a public for them’ (Franz Liszt) He is accompanied by the curator of the series and Hyperion regular, Julius Drake. This first volume in the series features the American tenor Matthew Polenzani who has been astounding Met opera audiences in recent years with his expressive and ardent performances. A cosmopolitan artist who traveled prodigiously during his years as a virtuoso performer from 1838 to 1847, he chose song texts written both by denizens of Mount Olympus (Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Hugo, Tennyson, Tolstoy, Petrarch) and amateurs, the latter often aristocrats from Liszt’s glittering social circles. In advance of his bicentenary in 2011, we turn to a composer whose songs, against the vast bulk of his compositions in larger genres, were considered insignificant for well over a century.Ī collaborator with some of Europe’s best singers, such as the great French tenor Adolphe Nourrit and the husband–wife duo of Feodor and Rosa von Milde (the first Elsa and Telramund in Wagner’s Lohengrin), Liszt used song as a compositional laboratory in which to experiment with ‘Zukunftsmusik’, or ‘music of the future’, including some of his most finely wrought works. The start of another Hyperion Lieder series is always cause for celebration.
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