FRANZ LISZT : Konzertsolo & Odes funèbres (Leslie Howard) (1998) APE (image+.cue), lossless

This third release in the series of Liszt’s complete piano music contains a mixture of the known and the unknown, and comprises some of Liszt’s forays into larger forms (others are the Sonata, the Scherzo and March and the transcriptions). The first obvious feature is that Liszt never repeated a formal structure—and this applies equally well to the shorter piano works, and certainly to the orchestral, choral and chamber music. His search for new forms was constant and, while the Sonata and the ‘Faust’ Symphony may be his finest resolutions of the quest, his solutions are always of interest for their very variety of invention.
The old Kapellmeister from Eisenach was the first to use his name as the basis of a musical theme, and a great many of his later admirers have found his example irresistible. The theme itself (B flat–A–C–B natural) has an appealing symmetry which made it useful alike to Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Reger and Webern, to name but a few. Liszt’s great Fantasy and Fugue is as much a pioneering product of the then avant-garde as it is a homage to Bach, and the intense chromaticism frequently makes us lose all sight of tonality, although the work basically revolves around G minor and B flat major. As is well known, the piece was originally composed for the organ, probably based on one of Liszt’s own improvisations. But there is nothing haphazard about the final form of the work, and the Fugue contains a good many contrapuntal and harmonic subtleties. The might of the piece’s dramatic argument has always kept it among Liszt’s most popular works, even if more in the organ world than that of the piano. The original version for organ (entitled Präludium und Fuge) dates from 1856 and was arranged for piano in 1870. In 1871 Liszt issued revised versions for both instruments under the present title.
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