Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) Annees de Pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) Vol. 2 Deuxi�me annee: Italie (Second Year: Italy) Franz Liszt was born in 1811 at...
Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886)
Annees de Pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) Vol. 2
Deuxi�me annee: Italie (Second Year: Italy)
Franz Liszt was born in 1811 at Raiding (Doborjan) near �denburg
(Sopron) in a German-speaking region of Hungary. His father, Adam Liszt, was a
steward in the employment of Haydn's former patrons, the Esterhazy Princes, and
an amateur cellist. The boy showed early musical talent, exhibited in a public
concert at �denburg in 1820, followed by a concert in Pressburg (the modern
Slovak capital Bratislava). This second appearance brought sufficient support
from members of the Hungarian nobility to allow the family to move to Vienna,
where Liszt took piano lessons from Czerny and composition lessons from the old
Court Composer Antonio Salieri, who had taught Beethoven and Schubert. In 1822
the Liszts moved to Paris, where, as a foreigner, he was refused admission to
the Conservatoire by Cherubini, but was able to embark on a career as a
virtuoso, displaying his gifts as a pianist and as a composer.
On the death of his father in 1827 Liszt was joined again by his mother
in Paris, where he began to teach the piano and to interest himself in the
newest literary trends of the day. The appearance of Paganini there in 1831
suggested new possibilities of virtuosity as a pianist, later exemplified in
his Paganini Studies. A liaison with a married woman, the Comtesse Marie
d'Agoult, a blue-stocking on the model of their friend the novelist George Sand
(Aurore Dudevant), and the subsequent birth of three children, involved Liszt
in years of travel, from 1839 once more as a virtuoso pianist, a role in which
he came to enjoy the wildest adulation of audiences.
In 1844 Liszt finally broke with Marie d'Agoult, who later took her own
literary revenge on her lover. Connection with the small Grand Duchy of Weimar
led in 1848 to his withdrawal from public concerts and his establishment there
as Director of Music, accompanied by a young Polish heiress, Princess Carolyne
zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, the estranged wife of a Russian nobleman and a woman of
literary and theological propensities. Liszt now turned his attention to new
forms of composition, particularly to symphonic poems, in which he attempted to
translate into musical terms works of literature.
Catholic marriage to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein had proved impossible,
but application to the Vatican offered some hope, when, in 1861, Liszt
travelled to join her in Rome. The marriage did not take place and the couple
continued to live separately in Rome, starting a period of his life that Liszt
later described as une vie trifurquee (a three-pronged life), as he divided his
time between his comfortable monastic residence in Rome, his visits to Weimar,
where he held court as a master of the keyboard and a prophet of the new music,
and his appearance in Hungary, where he was now hailed as a national hero.
Liszt's illegitimate daughter Cosima had married the pianist and
conductor Hans von B�low, whom she later deserted for Wagner, already the
father of two of her children. His own final years were as busy as ever, and in
1886 he gave concerts in Budapest, Paris, Antwerp and London. He died in
Bayreuth during the Wagner Festival, now controlled by his daughter Cosima, to
whom his appearance there seems to have been less than welcome.
Liszt's earlier years of wandering, during the course of his
relationship with Marie d'Agoult, had given rise to two collections of piano
pieces, described, in terms hardly complimentary to his mistress, as years of
pilgrimage. The second year, set in Italy, includes three pieces inspired by
sonnets of Petrarch and previously published. The whole collection, composed
between 1837 and 1849, was finally published in 1858. Sposalizio, written in
1839, with its two combined themes, is based on Raphael's painting Lo sposalizio della Vergine in the
Vatican. It is succeeded by Il pensieroso, The Thinker, suggested by
Michelangelo's sculptured tomb of Giuliano de Medici in the Medici chapel in
Florence and carrying a quotation from the artist's words expressing
thankfulness that, made of stone, he may sleep, while the world remains full of
injustice. The tune that dominates the Canzonetta of Salvator Rosa, is by
Bononcini, but the inspiration of the piece is a reminder of the popularity of
the seventeenth century Italian painter, whose work had a particular wild
appeal to the romantic imagination, depicting the world of Auber's Fra Diavolo. The words of the Canzonetta
are written in the score, Vado ben spesso
cangiando loco / ma non so mai cangiar desio.
The three Petrarch sonnets are piano versions of settings of the poems,
Benedetto sia 'I giorno, e 'l mese, e
l'anno, Blessed be the day, the month and the year, Pace non trovo, e non da far guerra, War I
cannot wage, yet I find no peace, and l' vidi
in terra angelici costumi, I saw on earth angelic grace. After
Reading Dante turns to another of the great Italian literary figures, whose
Divine Comedy was to be subject to Lisztian metamorphosis in a later symphonic
poem. The title of the piece is taken from a poem by Victor Hugo, and the
sonata movement itself dwells on the Inferno, touching the sad fate of Paolo
and Francesca, damned for their forbidden love.
The last three pieces, Venice and Naples, are more overtly popular in
inspiration, a barcarolle with a melody borrowed from Rossini's Otello, a Canzone based on Peruchini and a
final vigorous Neapolitan Tarantella, with a melody published in a collection
by the Neapolitan Guglielmo Cottrau.
Jeno Jando
Jeno Jando was born at Pecs, in south Hungary, in 1952. He started to
learn the piano when he was seven and later studied at the Ferenc Liszt Academy
of Music under Katalin Nemes and Pal Kadosa, becoming assistant to the latter
on his graduation in 1974. Jand6 has won a number of piano competitions in
Hungary and abroad, including first prize in the 1973 Hungarian Piano Concours
and a first prize in the chamber music category at the Sydney International
Piano Competition in 1977. In addition to his many appearances in Hungary, he
has played widely abroad in Eastern and Western Europe, in Canada and in Japan.
He has recorded all Mozart's piano concertos and sonatas for Naxos. Other
recordings for the Naxos label include the concertos of Grieg and Schumann as
well as Rachmaninov's Second Concerto
and Paganini Rhapsody and the
complete piano sonatas of Beethoven.
Classical Music
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