FRANZ LISZT : Ballades, Legends & Polonaises (Leslie Howard) (1998) APE (image+.cue), lossless

This series of recordings of Liszt’s complete piano music began in the Liszt anniversary year 1986 with the complete waltzes. Liszt’s admiration for, but essential difference from, Chopin was remarked in the notes to that recording, and in this second collection, whose titles also bear resemblance to Chopin, it is once again Liszt’s originality which shines through, no matter what degree of homage is intended to Chopin’s models.
Among the sillier notions of our time is a theory, propounded by a number of writers on music who will be glad to have their anonymity preserved here, that Liszt stood in awe of Chopin’s musical forms and felt unable to express himself in them until after Chopin’s death, when he immersed himself in almost all of them. A few minutes’ inspection of the relevant dates shows a certain amount of plain error, and even a quick look at the music suffices to show that, whatever the inspiration, Liszt’s aims were at once totally different. It just happens that Liszt’s retirement from the life of the travelling virtuoso took place only a year or so before Chopin’s death and, for all the music Liszt had written previously, he now devoted himself to correcting earlier works, developing unfinished projects and striking out into new musical forms. And in between these supposed Chopin obsequies Liszt produced the final versions of fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, two books of Années de pèlerinage, the Transcendental Studies, the Paganini Studies, the Sonata, several symphonic poems and much besides. Meanwhile he conducted several seasons of opera, including three of Wagner’s. So the idea of brooding at length over his departed quondam friend and releasing his debt in music of Chopinesque titles remains a barrier to comprehension.

There is no explanation for the absence of the subtitle to the First Ballade from all editions apart from the Paris edition of 1849 and the Neue Liszt-Ausgabe of 1981. Nor is there any specific reference by Liszt as to the source of that title. We can only assume that, as in so much of Liszt’s music, there is an underlying narrative structure behind the musical one. The introduction alternates two phrases, the first of which is a clear reference to the beginning of Chopin’s First Ballade! The second is a delicate scherzo-like motif, and both imply a key of D major, soon to be confounded by the arrival of the Crusader’s Song proper, in D flat. The piece unfolds as a set of variations punctuated by a middle section—a kind of joyful march, replete with risky gestures of rapid scales between the phrases. This is an altogether happy and uncomplicated work, inexplicably neglected in the concert hall.
More notes of Leslie Howard