Dinner Recital at The Forge, London 27 th January 2015 This was the third of such dinner recitals since the Liszt Society inaugurated them in 2013. As members will know, these are joint society events involving the Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz and Alkan societies. Simon Jones of the Berlioz Society masterminded this year's event and I am delighted to report that it was a triumphant success. A capacity audience of 70 members from all four societies (plus guests from the Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss societies) were treated to a very varied programme of music, each society being responsible for twenty minutes of the programme. Firstly, Keri Fuge, soprano, accompanied by Matthew Fletcher at the piano, gave us four items by Berlioz: Villanelle (from Nuits d'été, Op. 7); La Mort d'Ophélie (from Tristia, Op. 18); L'Origine de la harpe (from Irlande, Op. 2b); and Zaïde (from Feuillets d'album, Op. 19). Only the first two of these were known to me and it was a pleasure to become acquainted with the other two. Together, they made a splendid set, splendidly performed. Keri Fuge's voice was full of character and displayed a wonderful mix of delicacy, power, virtuosity and tenderness. Matthew Fletcher's accompaniment was entirely sympathetic and sensitive to the music. This was a real treat. We then heard from Mark Viner who played the second piece (Andante con moto) from Alkan's Trois Andantes Romantiques pour piano, 2e Livre de Caprices Op. 13. He also preluded the piece with a short and very rare introduction by Alkan, known only from a manuscript source. The Andante was a most unusual piece, commencing simply and gradually growing ever more complex whilst retaining its essential form and rhythm throughout. As one might expect from Alkan, the pianistic demands became ever more severe as the piece proceeded but Mark Viner was well able to meet those demands and gave us an excellent performance of this interesting work. This was followed by the Saltarelle, finale de la Sonate de concert pour piano et violoncelle op 47, arrangée pour piano a quatre mains, played by Coady Green and Christopher Wayne Smith. This is a real helter-skelter of a finale and was played with great brio and zest by the two pianists and made me yearn to hear the original version for cello and piano. 1 THE LISZT SOCIETY Newsletter www.lisztsoc.org.uk N o 118 March 2015
Transcript
Dinner Recital at The Forge, London27th January 2015
This was the third of such dinner recitals since the Liszt Society inaugurated them in 2013. As members will know, these are joint society events involving the Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz and Alkan societies. Simon Jones of the Berlioz Society masterminded this year's event and I am delighted to report that it was a triumphant success.
A capacity audience of 70 members from all four societies (plus guests from the Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss societies) were treated to a very varied programme of music, each society being responsible for twenty minutes of the programme.
Firstly, Keri Fuge, soprano, accompanied by Matthew Fletcher at the piano, gave us four items by Berlioz: Villanelle (from Nuits d'été, Op. 7); La Mort d'Ophélie (from Tristia, Op. 18); L'Origine de la harpe (from Irlande, Op. 2b); and Zaïde (from Feuillets d'album, Op. 19). Only the first two of these were known to me and it was a pleasure to become acquainted with the other two. Together, they made a splendid set, splendidly performed. Keri Fuge's voice was full of character and displayed a wonderful mix of delicacy, power, virtuosity and tenderness. Matthew Fletcher's accompaniment was entirely sympathetic and sensitive to the music. This was a real treat.
We then heard from Mark Viner who played the second piece (Andante con moto) from Alkan's Trois Andantes Romantiques pour piano, 2e Livre de Caprices Op. 13. He also preluded the piece with a short and very rare introduction by Alkan, known only from a manuscript source. The Andante was a most unusual piece, commencing simply and gradually growing ever more complex whilst retaining its essential form and rhythm throughout. As one might expect from Alkan, the pianistic demands became ever more severe as the piece proceeded but Mark Viner was well able to meet those demands and gave us an excellent performance of this interesting work.
This was followed by the Saltarelle, finale de la Sonate de concert pour piano et violoncelle op 47, arrangée pour piano a quatre mains, played by Coady Green and Christopher Wayne Smith. This is a real helter-skelter of a finale and was played with great brio and zest by the two pianists and made me yearn to hear the original version for cello and piano.
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THE
LISZT SOCIETYNewsletterwww.lisztsoc.org.uk
No 118 March 2015
Wagner came next: "Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge" from Das Rheingold and "Die Frist ist Um" from Der Fliegende Holländer both superbly performed by Paul Carey Jones with Kelvin Lim at the piano. Paul Carey Jones is one of those performers who has an immediate stage presence. His operatic experience showed through at every moment, as he gripped the audience with a compellingly dramatic account of these great pieces. His acting is never overdone, though - he manages to convey deep emotion and commitment with the slightest of gestures and facial expression - and this, coupled with a fine voice, makes him one of those rare performers that one cannot stop watching or listening to for a moment. The highlight of the evening for me!
Finally, we heard Leslie Howard play the Quatre Valses oubliées, S215, by Liszt and, with Coady Green, the Tcherkessenmarsch aus Glinka's Oper Russlan und Ludmilla for piano duet, S629. The Valses oubliées are remarkable late works and, as such, embody much of the late Liszt's harmonic style. It was interesting to hear them performed here as a set - something I have never heard done before.
I personally find the Tcherkessenmarsch rather more of an enjoyable novelty than a great piece of music but it was played with great commitment and enthusiasm by the two performers and brought the concert to a fitting close.
Very warm thanks are due to all the performers and to the Berlioz Society for hosting the event. It is anticipated that another such dinner recital will be held in January 2016.
Jim Vincent
Thoughts on Liszt, Daniil Trifinov, and Carnegie Hall
Liszt lovers everywhere had cause to rejoice at the almost-all-Liszt program Daniil Trifonov featured at his 9th December, 2014 Carnegie Hall concert. Mr. Trifonov, one of our newest “wunderkinder”, comes courtesy of the plethora of piano competitions that produce a seemingly endless supply of digital wizards, and based on the evidence presented at this concert, he deserves every accolade he is receiving.
Trifonov opened with Liszt’s transcription of Bach’s mighty Fantasy and Fugue for Organ in G minor, and it was a real joy to be once again reminded of how well Liszt’s transcriptions of Bach have weathered the test of time. They are masterworks in their own right while remaining completely faithful to the masterworks out of which they arose. Liszt had an uncanny ability to transfer to the piano every organ sound, from massive full organ registrations, to scintillating mixtures, to solo trumpet stops, and Trifonov was up to the task in every way, almost convincing us that he was sitting at a 3 manual console complete with full pedalboard.
Next came the lone non-Liszt work, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111. In the context of this program, the sonata sounded remarkably Lisztian, as it progressed from its opening diabolical leaps into the bass, through the all but seamless coalescence of the two movements, to the mystically transcendent closing pages where the stratospheric trills nearly float off into heaven.
After intermission Trifonov returned to the stage to deliver a spell-binding performance of all twelve of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes. One could sense the audience’s near breathless excitement as people practically sat on their hands in order to refrain themselves from applauding as each etude passed by.
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Despite Mr. Trifonov’s brilliant performance, I could not help but wonder “What would Liszt think of a performance of all twelve of his Transcendental Etudes?” We seem to live in a time where musicians are almost obsessive in their desire to present encyclopedic completeness. As justification, some contend that key relationships between the pieces argue in favor of complete performances, and while the key relationships in Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes may be tantalizing (each of the flat major keys paired with its relative minor) do they really indicate a set intended to be performed in its entirety?
Of course key relationships are not the only indicator of whether a composer intended (or would even approve of) a group of pieces from a single opus number or a specific genre to be performed in their entirety and other criteria must to be taken into consideration as well.
Yet, our seemingly didactic age of concert programming feels so severe at times that for a performer to even simply re-sequence the individual pieces within a grouping is to invite criticism - and for an audience to applaud individual pieces is to eternally damn themselves as déclassé. While the lushness of Harmonies du soir, followed by the exquisite poetry of Chasse-neige create a beautiful ending, did Liszt really intend that the audience sit as quiet as a church crowd, as they watch the pianists hands fly into the air after having torn through Mazeppa? I wonder just what would Liszt say.
Now, having spoken about the performance, I must confess that I was not at Trifonov’s Carnegie Hall concert at all, and in fact I was not even in New York. I was in my home which is about 1000 miles from Carnegie Hall. A downloaded app from Medici TV on my iPad allowed me to watch this masterful performance on my television and you readers may do so also. What would Liszt have to say about our amazing technology that can now bring Carnegie Hall right into our homes? On this I am quite confident we all know exactly what Liszt would say - “Bravo!”
La Wayne Leno (USA)
COSIMARobert Mansell writes about his play
Plays often start out as one thing and end up as another. This one began with an idea to write something about Liszt’s wedding; which, as most readers of this newsletter will probably know, is an event which in fact never took place. ‘Liszt’s Wedding’ - that was to be the title of my play, but when I began to research more deeply on the subject I came to believe that it was too convoluted, and one with a rather too anticlimactic ending for a stage drama. Already having become fascinated by the characters involved, starting with Franz Liszt himself, I then continued further into the extraordinary Wagner saga, particularly that involving Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. So: ‘Liszt’s Daughter’ then became the title of the play. Ultimately it was changed to just ‘Cosima’ because her paternity became less the main subject matter, and her relationship with Wagner and its aftermath became much more to the fore. ‘Wagner’s Widow’ was also a title that was then considered at one time, but that would imply that the preceding actions were less evident, and so simply ‘Cosima’ it presently remains.
Those who are interested in knowing more about the extraordinary story of Liszt’s non-wedding should be directed to Alan Walker’s wonderfully researched and expounded tale in his 1990 volume ‘Liszt, Carolyne, and the Vatican’. Almost any one of the facts recorded in the excellent chronology with which he begins this great tome, could be the subject of a detailed thesis. To take just one minor example: why was Carolyne, the intended wife with whom Franz Liszt had eloped, a ‘Prussian princess’, when she was brought up nowhere near Prussia, but in a remote area of the Ukraine, and wasn’t born into the aristocracy? Of course the answer is because she was married to a ‘Prussian’ Prince; but then he, a Russian, actually
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wasn’t even Prussian or an aristocrat, and became a Prussian prince because his father helped defend St. Petersburg against Napoleon... but that in itself requires more detailed explanation… and so on it goes: every little fact requiring lengthy explanations! So I decided to leave all that alone and concentrate on Cosima - Liszt’s illegitimate daughter. She however was not born to the Ukrainian Princess, whom she later came to dislike intensely (yet another subject for a long discourse!), but to Liszt’s former paramour Marie d’Agoult, who was a French Countess with whom he had eloped while she was still married to the Count!
‘Bastard and Adulteress’ - that is the subtitle of the play, and one of which some people may dislike the first word. Crude and unsubtle they may say, and possibly even too old-fashioned. Yes, but to me it is correct. There is no other word or term in English which adequately describes that state of birth except for “illegitimate” or “love-child”, both of which to me are not ‘dramatic’ enough.
I like the bluntness of the shorter word and also, particularly, the hint of a double meaning… a double meaning which becomes more clearly appropriate when the story continues after Wagner’s death, which it does in Act 2 of my play. Before that, Act 1 has covered the saga of Cosima’s separation from her first husband, the Baron von Bülow, and her pregnancy with three illegitimate children by Richard Wagner. In this she was merely carrying on the tradition started by her own father! The only difference being that she already had two children by her husband, whereas Liszt had only the three bastards; however those children’s mother already had two legitimate children. Adultery begetting adultery!
Cosima’s illegitimate daughter, Isolde, becomes very upset when her mother later, for somewhat contentious reasons, attempts to deny Isolde’s Wagnerian paternity and forces the distraught daughter to take Cosima to court in an attempt to assure Isolde’s own son’s inheritance to at least part of the Wagner estate.
It is readily apparent that this is a complex subject, rendered even more provocative when the incestuous and adulterous behaviour of operatic characters created by Wagner’s fertile mind is added into the discussion on stage! And this without even going into the difficult subject of religion, which also comes into the script, particularly Liszt’s devout Catholicism and the virulent anti-semitism with which the Wagnerian household is famously associated.
A professionally directed and acted fully-staged public reading/workshop performance of the play will be held at the RADA Studio Theatre, London on Friday 5th June 2015 at 7.30pm. The purpose of the workshop reading at the RADA Studio Theatre is to explore the audience reaction to this story and particularly to request their feedback. The larger the audience the better the feedback, so a large audience is to be hoped for! The booking details are below.
Friday 5th June 2015, 7.30pmRADA Studio Theatre
16 Chenies Street, London WC1E 7EXTickets - members £18 / non-members £22Available from -
Rosemary Frischer, 2 St. George's Avenue, London N7 0HDtel: 020 7700 7799; email: [email protected]; Enclose SAE
or
RADA Studios Box Office on 0207 307 5060
Robert Mansellwww.robertmansell.com
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CD REVIEWWhile I Dream - Songs by Liszt and Schumann
Barbara Bonney and Antonio PappanoDecca 470 289-2
One of the presents that Santa brought me on the 25th December 2014 was this wonderful CD of songs by Liszt and Schumann sung by Barbara Bonney. It was recorded as long ago as 2001 and released in 2002 but, oddly, I had not come across it before.
The Schumann portion of the disc is the moving series of songs entitled ‘Dichterliebe’ (A Poet's Love), composed in 1840. It is a most beautiful work and is most beautifully performed, but it is the Liszt songs that are the main focus of this review.
The Liszt songs performed are as follows:
Oh! quand je dors
Comment, disaient-ils
S'il est un charmant gazon
Enfant, si j'etais roi
Der Fischerknabe
Mignon's Lied
Freudvoll und leidvoll
Der du von dem Himmel bist
Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh
Im Rhein, im schönen Strome
Die Lorelei
O komm im Traum
It is a pity that the sleeve notes do not quote the 'S' numbers or opus numbers for these pieces but, in general, it is the second versions of the songs which are performed, with the exception of S'il est un charmant gazon, Der du von dem Himmel bist and Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh, which are all performed in their original versions. Interestingly, Oh! quand je dors is given in both its second version and in its original incarnation, in German, as O komm im Traum.
Liszt himself came to be quite critical of many of the first versions of his songs. In a letter written in the early 1850s he described his early songs as 'mostly inflatedly sentimental and often overladen with accompaniment'. Almost invariably, his later revisions are more compact and simplified, generally very much to their advantage, although some of the earlier songs do have a youthful exuberance which can be very appealing.
It is difficult to say much of a critical nature about Barbara Bonney's perfomance of these songs as they are all absolutely exquisite! I have quite a number of fine versions of Liszt songs on CD by a variety of performers but I have never heard such a ravishing selection as this before. The purity and quality of her voice, in all registers, is quite astounding and her expression and understanding of every nuance of these songs is breathtaking. From first note to last, one is utterly captivated. It is almost invidious to pick out highlights from such a CD but I will attempt to do so, none the less:
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Listen to Bonney's beautifully sustained final note of Oh! quand je dors, followed by Pappano's sensitive concluding accompaniment; or the lovely sense of youthful purity in the voice during Der Fischerknabe; Mignon's Lied has a delightful feeling of yearning and nostalgia whilst Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh - one of my favourite Liszt songs - has a perfect, cold remoteness about it. Im Rhein, im schönen Strome demonstrates a lovely rippling piano accompaniment and the well-known Die Lorelei wonderfully evokes the various emotions throughout the piece. Finally, it is a delight to hear the earlier version of Oh! quand je dors, namely, O komm im Traum. The earlier version is more operatic in nature and one can understand why Liszt 'toned it down' , but it possesses some gorgeous Lisztian harmonies which make this earlier piece very well worth hearing.
These brief comments, though, cannot adequately give an impression of the sheer beauty of Barbara Bonney's voice throughout this magnificent recital. I can only urge you to buy a copy and experience it for yourself!
Jim Vincent
MEMBERS’ LETTERS
Liszt in Hamburg
During a visit to Hamburg to attend a concert in the Leiszhalle, I visited the Brahms Museum. This is one of the best composer museums I have visited and on display there is a photo of Liszt taken in 1861, which I reproduce below. Visitors to the museum are allowed to play the piano belonging to Brahms. Nearby is the Telemann museum and the street is being transformed into a composers' quarter with museums dedicated to Felix and Fanny Mendellssohn, C. P. E. Bach and Mahler. In the Kunsthalle, there is a portrait in oil of Liszt by Franz Von Lenbach dating from 1884.
Judith Gore
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I wonder if members have heard of a Dutch pianist called Reinbert de Leeuw? He has made a few Liszt recordings for Philips, which include some of the chamber works (Élégies I and II etc). Recently I dug out an old tape of him playing some of the late piano works which I had not listened to for years. It includes an absolutely remarkable account of Unstern! He is a very thoughtful pianist who deserves to be heard more.
There is a fair bit on Youtube of his playing, including a complete account of Christus for solo piano, for which I believe he was awarded the Edison Prize. There appears to be a CD of this performance available as well.
I would be interested to hear through the Members’ Letters Page of the newsletter whether other members have encountered this pianist.
Colin Hargreaves
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