FRANZ LISZT : Douze Grandes Études (Leslie Howard) (1998) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Liszt completed the ‘Twelve Great Studies’ in October 1837, and they were published the following year. Schumann gave them the most enthusiastic notice, but lamented that only their composer would ever be able to play them, such was their technical requirement. Nonetheless, his wife Clara immediately learned the ninth of them, and by degrees they enjoyed at the very least an infamy, if not quite a popularity, amongst performers, and became the stuff of legend to audiences. Of course, the versions which are regularly performed today, the Douze Études d’exécution transcendante of 1851 (recorded in Volume 4 of this series), were essentially simplifications of the present set, with a number of cuts, recastings and musical second thoughts and decked with titles. But the almost absurd level of difficulty of the 1837 set lends it a particular devil-may-care quality which one can observe in the early operatic fantasies, the Album d’un voyageur and the Magyar Rapszódiák. This quality is one which has brought much unwarranted criticism upon Liszt’s head: the musical value of the works remains incontestable, and it is on the poor performer’s head that all complaint should fall if the undeniable struggle to overcome the most taxing demands should obscure the fundamental clarity and simple beauty of the musical discourse. That these works’ inner nature is simple and straightforward suggests itself from their history: Liszt took music composed in his childhood (precocious source material, to be sure) as the basis for studies in musical expression seen through the virtue of complete technical accomplishment. In short, musical virtuosity—the first principle of all great études.
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