Liszt: Works for Piano and Orchestra

 

Prelude

For this Works Series entry of Franz Liszt's orchestral music, I will be covering the 2CD set which includes Liszt's piano concertos and piano concertante works. While I have inserted older cover art above and below, this blog post actually contains my listening of the sixth through seventh volumes (of seven) from EMI / Warner's 2011 box set of Liszt's orchestral and concertante music with Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra performing.

As you can tell by all of the cover art above and below in this blog post, these two CDs of Liszt's piano concertos and concertante pieces have been popular ever since they appeared in the late 70s and early 80s.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of Liszt's concerto music, especially the fantasies. To my ears, Liszt substitutes musical substance and worth for virtuosic showboating. I can't fault the touring pianist, for this attributed his great success on the concert stage.

Listen to either of the concertos or the aforementioned fantasies. The music bears a stop-and-start action, where the orchestra constantly stops in order to make way for large portions of solo piano. The amount of chromatic pianistic flourishes become tiring after a while, although French pianist Michel Béroff is impressive throughout.

There are some piece which rise above my criticisms. Totentanz excels due to its theme and variations format, and the Lélio Fantasy and Malédiction offer some quality lyrical and pastoral passages to contrast to the pianistic fireworks. While Liszt's First Piano Concerto might be the more familiar, with sturdier motives running across the music, I do think Liszt bettered himself in his Second Piano Concerto, offering a little more between soloist and orchestra.

Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra aren't given an awful lot to do in these works, but I do wish the EMI sonics allowed more interactions between the orchestra and piano. Here, the piano is way out in front, whereas the winds are behind the strings, making wind and solo piano pairings a subtle effect, rather than a colorful one. Both Masur and Béroff drive this music excitingly, realizing that is what Liszt's concertante music really needs.

So really, in the end, my criticisms lie with Liszt. Listeners may not have such qualms as I do, thus this set is wonderful way to pick up a lot of Liszt's piano concertante music. If you want even more, add Masur's symphonic poems, symphonies, and orchestrated Hungarian Rhapsodies to these, making for a fine complete set of Liszt's music.

 

 Find more Liszt recordings HERE!