The prolific Saverio Mercadante (1795–1870) was a composer of a similar mould to Rossini, although rather fewer of his works have stood the test of time, being not so strong on personality as those of his great compatriot. But occasionally one of the sixty or so operas is given (Liszt actually wrote a fantasy on themes from Il giuramento, "Réminiscences de La Scala") and a few instrumental pieces remain on the fringe of the repertoire. With the Soirées italiennes Liszt was not as generous as he had been with Rossini's Soirées, and he chose just six to transcribe, successfully managing to select the pieces which differ as widely as possible from their pretty obvious Rossini models. Sadly, these transcriptions are quite rare nowadays, probably because they are absolutely unrestrained in their taxing technical demands—even the gentler pieces have fiendishly intricate details which render them immediately beyond the salon performer. Liszt’s method is of the same stamp as with the Rossini pieces, and the transcriptions themselves, depicting in turn the spring, a gallop, a Swiss shepherd, a sailor’s serenade, a drinking song and a Spanish gypsy girl, require no further gloss.

The Opus 2 Variations written by the 12-year-old Liszt reveal a formidable technique for his age; the fact that Liszt’s personality has not really emerged is of course inescapable, but the flexibility in piano writing and the neatness of the formal grasp make the work an attractive enough showpiece. A short introduction precedes the theme (Ah! Come nascondere la fiamma vorace from Rossini’s Ermione), chiefly remarkable for its rudimentary use of contrast and already quasi-orchestral keyboard effects such as a timpani-like tremolo trills; the ensuring variations are almost solely designed as a vehicle for brilliant figuration in the salon style of the day, but within these limitations the young Liszt shows some fertility of invention, particularly with an attractive little polonaise.

The 2 Csárdás are amongst the most interesting of Liszt’s later works. Less free than the Hungarian Rhapsodies and more specifically Hungarian rather than gypsy in tone, full of spare lines, angular rhythms and the harmonies of the future, they point the way to Bartók. The first of them is a short Allegro which discontentedly begins as if in A minor, passes to A major for passages in similar mien to a Valse oubliée with their mephistophelian irony, and after much sequential modulation, ends quietly but unsettled in F-sharp minor. The better known Csárdás obstinée takes up where the first Csárdás leaves off with a repeated F-sharp before the ostinato accompaniment begins, with its left-hand F-sharp major triad contrasted with a falling phrase in the right-hand beginning on a descending tetrachord (A-G-F#-E) of Hungarian type (the work is remarkable for this kind of asymmetrical harmonic relationship between melody and accompaniment, but the piece is really in B minor/major, and before the coda strepitosa there is a marvellous transformation of the first theme into B major in repeated octaves). Overall, the incessant focus on the main motif gives this work a very strongly hypnotic character.

L’Hymne du Pape, written circa 1864 in honour of Pope Pius IX, exists in various versions including versions for piano and organ, and was later transformed into the mighty ‘Tu es Petrus’ movement of the oratorio Christus. Philip Thomson is (as usual) an excellent messenger of Liszt's religiosity.

The imitation of all things Spanish was staple fare for many decades in the nineteenth century, and music with a Spanish flavour eventually became a good deal more popular than any truly Spanish art- or folk-music, with famous offerings by Bizet, Rimsky-Korsakov, Moszkowski, Chabrier, Glinka and Lalo, to name a few at random. La romanesca is a Spanish dance melody which used to be strangely ascribed to Italy in various Liszt catalogues; Liszt published his first elaboration of it as a ‘fameux air de danse du seizième siècle’ [‘famous dance tune of the sixteenth century’] in 1840. The second version which followed in 1852 and is played here, recomposes several parts and the whole thing is more nostalgically viewed.

In 1857, Liszt wrote a work on motifs from Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's opera "Diana von Solange", a work Liszt intended to be dedicated to Wagner, who made it clear, in a letter to Liszt, that he would prefer money. Liszt’s piano arrangement is felicitously constructed, sounds perfectly echt-Liszt, and the 2:06 theme with its development and climax is quite attractive.

As previously alluded to, the original opera was not well-received: after its second appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1891, reviews poured out which were almost all negative; one writer described the piece as "simply rubbish", while others derisively referred to it as "Diana von So-Langweilig" (so boring). Another critic predicted that the work would not last three performances in the house; in the event, it lasted two. When it was discovered that a third outing was intended on January 12, a petition, bearing three hundred signatures and demanding that the opera be removed from the repertory, was delivered to the management, who hastily replaced it with Fidelio.

Giuseppe Donizetti (1788–1856) has fared even less well than Michael Haydn as a brother of a much more gifted and celebrated man; his Grande Marche was composed for the coronation of Sultan Abdülmecid-Khan in 1839, and for some decades it became the national anthem of the Ottoman Empire. Liszt transcribed it for piano in 1847 as a fulsome concert paraphrase when he visited Istanbul and was decorated by the Sultan with the Order of Glory; the work would bring his traveling virtuoso years to a close, and his retirement would be tantamount to declaring open season on the piano for all other young pianists.

"In your last letter you ask me to tell you about Wagner. There would be much to say. Wagner by himself through his books…and his three dramas—The Flying Dutchman—Tannhäuser and Lohengrin—has done the work of a whole body of engineers and sappers. It will be at least a dozen years for his ideas to be digested and for the seeds he has sown to rise up and produce their harvests."—letter from Liszt to his cousin Eduard Liszt, 1854.

This piece (dated from 1852) comes from the opera of Wagner (specifically Lohengrin) whose long and storm-tossed friendship with Liszt is one of the most complex in musical history; Liszt’s enthusiasm and financial and practical support for the living composer he most revered is very well documented, as is the fact of Liszt’s being entrusted with producing and conducting the first performances of Lohengrin since Wagner was in exile on pain of death after his prominent support of the 1848 revolution (typically, Liszt received small thanks from Wagner for his efforts). For some reason, Liszt issued this transcription of Elsa’s Bridal Procession with his flamboyant account of the ‘Entry of the Guests’ from Tannhäuser, with which it scarcely belongs, so that will be scored (at some point) separately. Wolfram gives an impassioned rendition.

Liszt's Ave verum corpus (Hail, true body), for mixed choir and optional organ accompaniment was composed in 1871; it is a short piece, but in a small space it explores a wide harmonic territory. Simplicity is combined with beauty and expressive power—the opening is innocuous enough, but the wounds of Christ are soon reflected in the harmony. This gives way to a passage marked "dolciss." in the major mode, and a reference to death produces the triad of D-sharp minor, all eventually returning to D major, ready for the closing bars of "Amen".

Whatever else the world may debate about his life and work, one thing is generally conceded: Liszt was the first modern pianist. The technical "breakthrough" he achieved during the 1830s and '40s was without precedent in the history of the piano—all subsequent schools were branches of his tree. The first indication of this breakthrough had come in 1837-39 with the appearance of the Douze Grandes Études; these works (along with the early Paganini studies) represented a treasure of keyboard resources not found in any earlier work. The first version of the Transcendentals date back to 1826—Liszt would now take these juvenile exercises and transform them into works of towering difficulty. After they were published by Haslinger of Vienna, a review copy found its way into the hands of Schumann who astutely observed their connections with the juvenile pieces, overlaid though they are with monstrous technical complexities, and described them as "studies in storm and dread for, at the most, ten or twelve players in the world." It was partly as a result of Liszt playing his Grandes Etudes in public, under widely varying circumstances, that he revised them yet again as "Études d'exécution transcendante", smoothing out their more intractable difficulties; however, modern scholarship has done a disservice to Liszt by suppressing the two earlier versions, arguing that they do not represent Liszt's final thoughts. For Liszt, a composition was rarely finished, all his life he went on reshaping, reworking, adding, subtracting (sometimes a composition exists in 4 or 5 different versions simultaneously!). To say that it progresses towards a "final" form is to misunderstand Liszt's art; entire works are "metamorphosed" across a span of 25 years or more, accumulating and shedding detail along the way. It may of course not be essential to learn the early models before one plays the Transcendentals well, but it will certainly colour the player's attitude towards them, in a positive sense, and will bring him more closely into line with Liszt's own attitude towards them, if he hears the Transcendentals over that same musical background against which Liszt himself composed them. The modern pianist may disparage Liszt's studies (it has certainly become trendy in the YouTube comment section to do so) but he should be able to play them, otherwise he admits to having a less than total command of the keyboard (what harsh words have been uttered against Liszt's virtuosity, usually by those who could not match it! How strongly has it been attacked in the name of "Art"! Yet virtuosity is an indispensable tool of musical interpretation; one recalls Saint-Saëns's telling aphorism: "In Art, a difficulty overcome is a thing of beauty.").

The Tenth Study, usually accounted to be the finest of the 1851 set, is even more imposing in the 1837 version, although Liszt’s later solution for the layout of the opening material produces a more restless effect by eliminating the demand for playing melody notes with the left hand in amongst double sixths in the right. In a very solid sonata structure, the 1837 text does not break the flow towards the end of the development, but does ask for some very awkward playing of enormous stretches. (Liszt’s hand almost certainly contracted as he grew older: Amy Fay reliably reports that the old Liszt could just take the black-note tenth chords at the end of the slow movement in Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata). The 1837 version also has a much longer coda, which abruptly changes metre and becomes ferocious, and is (at times) right on the edge of the possible.

An exceptionally vibrant interpretation of Liszt's reminiscences on the closing sextet of Donizetti's ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’.

The sextet is one of the greatest pieces in the literature; when Caruso sang it in New York, such pandemonium broke loose that policemen stormed into the Met thinking that a riot had broken out. It is the pivotal point of the opera, with its conflicting and interwoven emotions of the enraged Edgar, the remorseful Enrico, the scarcely sane Lucia, and the sundry other rogues and varlets. Liszt's transcription commences in 3/4 time and, after its syncopated introduction, mirrors the orchestral and vocal parts before becoming airborne with a fluttering cadenza passage leading to a lovely arperggio throughout the upper half of the keyboard. The time signature then changes to 9/8, and the theme is developed in right-hand chords while the left is occupied by a series of arpeggios and intermittent trills, softly played, but which by their continuous presence and increasing dynamics serve to create a sense of considerable emotional pressure. Liszt then notches up the temperature by inverting the right-hand-left-hand treatment of melody and accompaniment; the climax is finally reached when that tensely repressed accompaniment bursts through the surface of the melody. The artistry involved in creating this cathartic result is astonishing in its uncanny preservation of the sense and feel of the original work as encased in a vivid, dreamlike state. At last, the piece then closes with a return in 3/4 to the original theme, which then fragments into booming left and right-hand chords before once again coalescing into a final rollercoaster arpeggio that brings the music to a close.

Queen Victoria’s cousin Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, wrote a good deal of music if not exactly a deal of good music, but Liszt was a kind man and actually conducted Tony, oder Die Vergeltung (‘Tony, or The Retribution’) at the Weimar Court Theatre in April 1849, the year in which Liszt made this transcription of the Hunting Chorus and Styrian pastoral elements from the opera, which does its best with the pretty commonplace hunting chorus.

Yulianna Avdeeva gives a unique yet tasteful performance of one of Liszt's most sublime paraphrases: that on Verdi's Aida. Liszt became acquainted with Aida soon after its first performance in 1871–it is difficult to know exactly when this paraphrase was made, but it did not reach publication until 1879. The piece is based on music from the temple-scene of the Act I finale and the ecstatically beautiful G-flat duet from the end of the opera; the former consists of two main thematic components: the melody to which the priestesses chant praises of their god, and the subsequent dance.
The work demonstrates keyboard transcription at its finest: the writing at times is of unsurpassed delicacy and beauty (showing kinship with the contemporaneous Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este!), the thematic material is treated with sophisticated harmonic variety, the religious themes are somewhat altered to make a more mystical tone-poem, and the resulting nostalgic and wistful air which permeates the empyrean final page, is absolutely stunning.

Composed in 1883, the Third Mephisto Waltz takes the harmonic language even further than the Second, featuring chords built up by fourths with numerous passages of descending minor triads whose roots are a semitone apart. The chord on which these progressions are based, according to Alan Walker, "is difficult to explain in terms of traditional harmony. It is best regarded as a 'fourths' chord in its last inversion." Tonally, the music is pulled between F-sharp major, D minor and D-sharp minor. As in its predecessors, the Third Waltz has the devil dancing in triple time while other groups of three move past so quickly that a larger rhythm of four is established, and triple time is abandoned altogether in the dreamlike passage near the work's conclusion.

Liszt’s transcription of Gounod's Hymne à Sainte Cécile was written in 1866; promptly made, yet also promptly forgotten, by Liszt himself, it would seem. It is however a beautiful work, distinguished by one of Gounod’s finest melodies, and its obscurity is quite unwarranted.

Igor Ardašev's ferocious rendition of Liszt's Trovatore paraphrase. Exhibiting a freer, more Lisztian manner in its music, the work is based upon the Act IV duet from Verdi's Il trovatore between Leonora and Manrico (who has been condemned to death) with the accompanying chorus singing the Miserere (which is distantly derived from the opening of Allegri’s Miserere). This imaginatively colorful gem was originally issued along the other splendid Ernani and Rigoletto paraphrases.

When Don Carlos first premiered in 1867, the publisher Ricordi commissioned Liszt to write a piece on it, and the composer complied with a modestly demanding transcription, confined to the opening of the second scene of Act III of the five-act version of Verdi’s mighty opera. The title of the transcription is somewhat misleading: Verdi’s number is a single piece of music which juxtaposes a festive chorus of the people of Madrid in praise of King Philip II with a chorus of monks leading those condemned by the Inquisition to death by fire. Liszt’s arrangement is, if anything, more majestic than the original, to which it adheres quite faithfully. François-René Duchâble gives a wonderfully crisp and succinct performance.

Liszt's "Hungarian Coronation Mass" was composed in honor of Franz Josef who became King of Hungary in 1867. This ceremonial choral work has been recorded before, and Liszt's two transcriptions are exquisite rarities: the 'Benedictus' is gentle but rapturous, while the 'Offertorium' exudes both quiet contemplation and ecstatic jubilance.

Count Géza Zichy (1849–1924) was quite a successful opera composer in his day, and was further renowned for producing a large corpus of piano music for the left hand alone (as a boy he had lost his right arm whilst hunting) and being the world's first professional one-armed pianist. His Valse d’Adèle is the third of a set of Six Studies of 1876 for the left hand (dedicated to Liszt, who had arranged for their publication) which Liszt expanded in every sense in this version for two hands.

Published in 1852 as the first piece of the Trois Caprices-Valses, the Valse de bravoure is of the splendid, virtuoso mien with its rapid and brilliant double-notes, octaves and trills. By turns, light and witty, delicate and languid, brilliant and cheerful, the Valse is full of charm and originality, and the neglect of the Trois Caprices seems inexplicable.

Two contrasting recordings of the lovely second Caprice from the S214 set which is a rework of the earlier S210 Valse mélancolique from 1839. Whilst Liszt retains the two main themes in the second version, the entire constitution and character is altered to become more pensive and poignant.

00:00 -- Rose
06:01 -- Filipec

The Valse de Concert (titled ‘Valse à capriccio’ in the earlier version) was published by Liszt as the third of Trois caprices-valses, the others being the revised versions of the Valse mélancolique and the Valse de bravoure, so it is clear that here as elsewhere he did not mind mixing original works with those based on other material. But this waltz really is an original piece, both because of the extraordinary variety which Liszt brings to his treatment of the Lucia waltz (5:34 becomes a gorgeous fantasia on the Lucia theme, weaving through various keys in dreamy reverie) and because of his happy combination of that theme with the Parisina waltz in invertible counterpoint.

Ave Maria is the salutation given by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation ("Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee", Luke 1:28). To these words many additions have been made, both as prayers addressed to the Blessed Virgin (such as that prayed in The Rosary) and as musical texts. This work, originally written in 1846 and revised in 1852 (before finding its way into the S173 Harmonies poétiques et religieuses as the 2nd piece, transcribed for piano), reflects the lesser-known, deeply spiritual side of Liszt–the man who fought tirelessly to raise the standards of sacred music, setting aside all notions of popular esteem to remain faithful to his vocation as a true church musician. Expertly performed by Hans-Joachim Lustig's chamber choir I Vocalisti.

Clidat's sensitive recording of yet another example of Liszt's rudimentary/early impressionism - his first Légende.

While writing, Liszt had in mind the charming story of Francis of Assisi, who beheld the multitude of birds which filled the wayside and was moved to preach to them. "And forwith those which were in the trees came around him, and not one moved during the whole sermon; nor would they fly away until the Saint had given them his blessing." Certainly an evocative story, and Liszt has matched it with equally evocative music in which we constantly hear the chirping and twittering of birds (the piece is filled with ornithological effects the likes of 1:50). At the first entry of St Francis, Liszt has the monk adress the flock in recitative and subdue their joyous song to his words; the sermon itself rises heavenwards in a series of solemn chords whose expanding harmonies suggest that God himself is looking down on the scene with approval.

In his preface, Liszt apologises to St. Francis ("the glorious poor servant of Christ") for his lack of ingenuity in capturing the remarkable scene. In fact, he reveals such skill in conjuring up bird sounds from the keyboard that the work should be regarded as the historical link between Daquin's "Le Coucou" and Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux.

The second piece from the numinous Deux légendes, some of Liszt's finest examples of conjuring up natural imagery at the keyboard.

Also known as "St. Francis of Paola walking on the waves", the piece is based on the well-known story of St. Francis of Paola being turned away by the boat-man at the ferry-crossing of the Straits of Messina because he could not afford the fare. "If he is a saint," remarked the boatman, "let him walk." Whereupon St. Francis having blessed his cloak in the name of God, placed it on the waters, lifted up one part of it like a sail, and floated safely across the straits to the other side. When the boatman saw what had happened, he fell on his knees, implored pardon for his refusal, and begged the saint to return to the boat. "But God, for the glory of His holy name... caused him to refuse this offer and to arrive in port before the boat." Remarkably, the narrative background to the piece in no way hampers Liszt from devising a very satisfying musical structure: we hear the menacing sound of the waves (brought out by Cziffra astoundingly - 1:57!) and the tremendous swell of the waters, and through it all there sounds the "St Francis" theme, floating serenely across the landscape.