Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Do you think Liszt lacks melody?

Well the Années de Pelerinage set by Berman is a must isn't it? First book specially, i think you need to listen to the whole thing. It's not that long anyway.

Liszt is a fine, fine composer. Not all of his compositions are of an equally high level, but many of them are masterpieces. There is lots of melody in his music. One just has to bring it out. I am a bit annoyed that some people like to portray him as the virtuoso without substance. That's not true. One needs to read his scores thoroughly, and then one will find melodic substance. The Annes de Pelerinage are a prime example of amazing virtuosity coupled with melodic power.

Having said this, Liszt is currently not my favorite as I haven't really dealt with too much of his music. Spontaneously, I'd prefer Chopin's melos over Liszt's. However, I can clearly see myself becoming drawn into Liszt's music and learning about his musical core value in the future.

What I like about Liszt is that he explored the entire spectrum of what is possible on the piano. Sometimes with unparalleled beauty and other times with unparalleled vulgarity. I'm not sure with which "popular" works you've already formed opinions. But my favorites on the more melodic side are:
1. (from Annes de Pellerinage)
__a. The 3 Sonettos
__b. Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa
__c. Tarantella
2. (from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses)
__a. Les funérailles
__b. Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude
3. En rêve
4. Concert Etudes
__a. Un sospiro
__b. Il Lamento
5. Valse-Impromptu
6. Sonata in Bm

If transcription of other composers melodies are fair game, Leslie Howard has (I think) 3 volumes of opera transcriptions by Liszt. Several of the Hungarian Rhapsodies use folk songs as their melodic basis. I like 9, 10, and 12. The Schubert song transcriptions and the Six Chants Polonais from Chopin are melodic.

I think virtually every Liszt piece is melodic. The only question is whether he sometimes has so much other pianistic figuration going on that the melody gets obscured.

Occasionally would be my answer. Part of the problem can be traced to some pianists who want to try and impress by not keep all the figurations at an appropriate dynamic level. According to Alan Walker's first volume of his Liszt biography, Liszt hated it when pianists played his music that way.

Yeah, the Transcendental Etudes in their second version are like this. But I think he realised this when he revised them for their final version because they're a lot less 'busy'.

Is the "problem" (if there is one) perhaps not with the composer but with the type of pianists likely to perform their music?

I have very limited experience compared to many if not most on this board, but in that limited experience, a lot of piano students and young competitors chose Liszt (and the flashiest of his pieces) for the flash and virtuosity, and because those of his works they choose showcases their virtuosity to the utmost.

I have always thought I did not like Liszt because I associated him with this "loud, louder, loudest" pyrotechnic display of technique type of pianism. Having now been exposed to really excellent video and audio recordings (and a recent recital) of Liszt works by really _musical_ pianists, I have rethought my feelings about Liszt.

As I said, this says more about my limited experience than about the composer. I was a piano student as a kid but did not have access to recordings as a rule (my mom had one Van Cliburn 'Greatest hits' album and one Liberace album)...I am in awe of the knowledge a lot of board members have about composers and pianists.

Myself, I have mixed feelings about the great man. Heart-rending, beautiful melodies. Astonishing harmonic sequences, paving the way for Wagner and music history. Fascinating original pianistic textures.

And yet... I often feel there's something missing; some bedrock sense of depth that I get from, say, Beethoven and Chopin. So that, sadly for me, I've always thought of Liszt as second-rate Chopin.

But realizing how important Liszt is to people on this forum-- and worldwide-- makes me think I might be missing something. Perhaps, along the lines of ProdigalPianist, I've been listening to the wrong pianists. Or to the wrong pieces. So there may be hope for me; after all, I used to think Mozart was just second-rate Beethoven until I was abruptly cured of that a few years ago.

I'll try some of the suggestions from this thread. Meanwhile, I do at least hold the Db major Consolation dear to my heart, as my grandmother used to play it....

http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/2192/essays4.html

Please click on the above and read Alfred Brendel's essay "Liszt Misunderstood" for an educated opinion on the music of Franz Liszt. He says it far better than I ever could.

Sophia

I understand the point you're making, and yet "second-rate Chopin" isn't an association I'm comfortable with. I guess I just don't find much similarity at all between Liszt's and Chopin's music; it's a difference of kind rather than degree, too, so the comparison seems inapposite.

Lest anyone misunderstand my point, I do regard Liszt as a great composer in his own right.

Steven

Interesting. Maybe that's exactly what I'm missing: I'm trying to view Liszt through a Chopin lens, instead of "directly", whatever that means.

I think I did something similar with Bruckner and Mahler. (This may be a better comparison than the Beethoven-Mozart I referenced in an earlier post.) I've loved every minute of Mahler almost since high school, and I used to think of Bruckner as a clumsy, repetitive second-rate Mahler. It was only when I began to listen to what he had to say on his own terms (in particular, a sort of fusing of some medieval aesthetics to a late romantic idiom) that I began to appreciate some Bruckner.

How difficult it is to hear anything freshly, and not through the lenses of what we already know....

Often, how it is played makes all the difference. Had it not been for Horowitz, I wouldn't be listening to Chopin. I used to find his music insipid and my early exposure to it was from Rubenstein, a famed Chopin interpretor. Oddly, Horowitz does nothing to make me enjoy Liszt as Rubenstein did.

Brendel is quite mean about Rachmaninoff D:

Well, consider me a convert.

Inspired by forum members' general love of Liszt, as well as Brendel's words, I've begun listening to him, for the first time in earnest. For the last 24h it's been mostly the trancendental etudes, and when you have several recordings to compare (from Naxos music library) and the scores to follow along with (from imslp.org), you can really get into it.

And far from feeling like second-rate Chopin, or any kind of Chopin, he now just feels like Liszt. And he's just great!

(Actually, in his combination of beautiful melody and lack of restraint, he really reminds me, to my surprise, of Schubert. Surely the middle section of the slow movement of Schubert's late A major sonata is Lisztian.)

Well I'll throw in my two cents. I think that a lot of people miss the overall reason for a composer/pianist' being and existence sometimes. Liszt did a great service to us all with his transcriptions and adaptations to solo piano. His personal research into developing technique paved the way to express ideas on a piano that were inconceivable before. His merit lies within his endeavors.

Still I must add that I've been a deep listener of Liszt for quite some time and I'm familiar with many of his works ( compositions ) and his creation and development of melodies is just as profound as any other composer.

The real question is....what constitutes a melody in our opinion. If its not catchy or memorable is it still a melody? I feel it reflects a lot about our musical understanding. When I first began listening to piano music, there were hundreds of pieces that I couldn't understand for the life of me, why they were popular or why one would bother to play them. It wasn't until after I began to understand the nature of music that I discovered the melodies within the music that were invisible to me at first.

Am I alone on this????

Liszt wrote many beautifully singing, melodic pieces. But he also wrote many that were strictly for showing off his own virtuosity; I think sometimes the two are mutually exclusive but by no means did he completely lack in melody. I think we tend to hear the flashy ones more often but there is some heartbreakingly beautiful Liszt out there.

With all liszt-experts around I would be delighted to hear what are those "many pieces" that were written for showing off only.
Do not mention etudes because they do have melodies and very good ones :>