Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Liszt's more accessible pieces?

So I'm wanting to possibly learn some shorter Liszt pieces to get myself more familiar with the composer, but I really have no idea which pieces would be accessible at my level. I was hoping the length to be somewhere around a Chopin prelude, perhaps a bit bigger, although if he has any larger works that would be accessible to me then I'd love to hear about them. Does Liszt have any pieces like that? I'm just not really familiar with many of his pieces.

Liebestraum?

Hm, the scores for the first two don't look to incredibly difficult. I'll give them a listen later when my dad is no longer watching TV. I'm sure I've heard them before....but I don't remember them really. Thanks! Any others? When I hear Liszt, all I think is EFFING HARD, so I wanna fix that thought and learn some of this composers works myself.

The Consolations? They're "nocturne"-ish and a couple of them are quite popular.

Alfred Publication (26191 Book & CD)), "Liszt - 21 Selected Piano Works", has a number of accessible/shorter works.

The Consolations look the easiest of the lot. I learnt Consolation No. 1 while doing piano grade 5 and was surprised that Liszt wrote something so simple (technically). Consolation No. 3 is a beautiful (and very popular) piece of music and after reading the score, it doesn't look too difficult. You might also like to try Libestraume 1, 2 and 3 although they are more difficult.

Just a side question: What is the most difficult piano piece that Liszt wrote? Is it Feux Follets or something else?

Hey, don't mean to hijack the thread but what Liszt pieces are there that are about equal to the level of pieces I'm playing? They're in my sig, just wondering. Thanks!

Consolation number 3 is lovely. Apart from some tricky 3 against 4 and wide left hand moves it is accessible and a beautiful thing to play.

Enjoy it!

Robert.

Thanks! I'll definitely listen to the consolations. The scores definitely look doable, with some looking almost to simple [not saying to simple is a problem, but right now I want pieces that will progress me technically as well]
Thanks!

"Au lac de Wallenstadt" might be what you are looking for. It might be a little bit of a challenge, but isn't seriously difficult. Plus, it's just a really nice proto-Impressionist piece.

Recently I also had a look at Consolation no. 3. The hardest part seems to be the different left/right hand rhythms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5LRRsNYZk

The Nocturne "En rêve" is not only about as simple as it gets, but quite a beautiful piece.

Along the lines of "Au lac de Wallenstadt," you should check out some of the other Annes de Pelerinage. Pastorale, le mal du pays & il pensiero are all relatively easy.

Sposalizio from the Italian Annes Pelerinages is very beautiful, and note too difficult. It's longer than a Chopin Prelude, but the only difficult part (technically) is 1 page of fast octaves. It's gorgeous.

If you're up for a challenge, the Waldesrauschen is an absolutely beautiful piece that is a few minutes long, presaged the impressionist movement, and isn't nearly played as much as the Consolation or Liebestraum. It requires a very fluid and polished technique to play well, but practicing it will help you with tone evenness, lightness, balance and octaves. It's well worth the investment.

That's a wonderful suggestion wr! I have a bit of a fascination with those proto-Impressionist Liszt works, such as Harmonies du soir or Jeux d'eau a Villa d'Este, but they're all too difficult for me. This one seems just about right and I love the imagery it brings up in my mind too.

Hopefully the topic creator gives this one some thought too!

Definitely the Berceuse (first version). Beautiful piece and very easy.

Here's a recording of it by Stephen Hough:

http://www.tehupload.com/share/a/220

Make sure you play the first version however as Liszt later revised it and made it into a completely different piece that is probably harder than Chopin's Berceuse. There's nothing wrong with the first version however, it's beautiful. :-)

You can get the score for free here:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/04516

Don't be put off by the triple stave, it's actually dead easy.

That's what I think too.
Unfortunately, increased acquaintance with Franz's music is more likely to reinforce that thought than alter it.

the problem with Liszt for me is that most of his works seem to try extra hard to be difficult to play. It seems like many passages (even in slower pieces) are made extra difficult to execute just for the sake of it, which makes his works harder to approach. Unlike getting aquainted to Bach, Mozart or Beethoven, I think you have to be a rather advanced pianist to even begin studying Liszt, with at least several years of serious studies previously, to prevent injuries for example.

But what piece to start with?

Liszt does have a couple of more accessible works, especially later ops, but they are often TOO easy, and often very slow, to the point of being boring.

My first Liszt piece was Gnomenreign. It took great time to master, to the extent that an etude can be "mastered", but in the end, I didn´t feel that the musical-content was worth it, and have since stopped playing it. In my opinion, his three "Annes"-books are his best works, some of those pieces are slightly accessible to newcomers. Check em out.

if you want something a bit more then the consolations, check out his Etudes Op.1