Franz Liszt

 

Franz Liszt
1811-1886

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer and concert pianist. While he is often depicted as a virtuoso pianist for whom the women swooned, he was also a serious composer, particularly for the church. While Liszt certainly bore the cosmopolitan nature of France, he also leaned into his Hungarian roots, possibly for popularity sake at the keyboard, but definitely exhibiting Nationalistic traits in his compositions.

My music history professor allowed himself to slight one composer per musical era. In the Baroque it was Rameau, and in the Romantic Era it was Liszt. I believe his feelings on Liszt were a matter of flash versus substance in his music, with Liszt filling the role of flamboyant spectacle, particularly at the keyboard.

Liszt may not be my favorite Romantic Era composer either, but it would be hard to ignore his substantial influence on the direction of Romanticism in music. Thus if his music was not particularly persuasive in Classical Music, at least for me, he surely was important for Classical Music. 

Certainly, he was a bridge between the early Romantics and late-Romanticism to my ear. Furthermore, many consider Liszt to have invented the symphonic poem genre, a programmatic extension of the concert overture, a genre still well-used today. That, and he held sway over important composers such as Berlioz and Wagner.

To me, his orchestral music sounds as the connective tissue between Romanticism and late-Romanticism, the latter a style and genre I am not always up for. I must be in a certain mood for such music to work effectively upon me, thus I can be hot and cold regarding Liszt's music, particularly the long tone poems.

I doubt I have been very thorough in my listening to Liszt in the past, so I am excited to begin anew. I doubt I will tread very far into his solo piano works, but we will go where his music takes me. For now, I have a bunch of Hungaroton recordings to get around to.

Recordings and reviews currently on hand
(Click orange links to visit a musing)
(Green links are reviews yet to come)

Recordings

1986: Orchestral Songs (Hungaroton)
1986: Psalms
1987: Requiem
1989: Hungarian Coronation Mass
1991: Septem Sacramenta (Hungaroton)
1993: Via Crucis & Missa Choralis (Thorne)
1994: Sacred Choral Music (Ugrin)
1994: Missa Solennis
1997: Symphonic Poems (Mehta)
1998: Faust Symphony (Barenboim)
1998: Hungarian Rhapsodies (Fischer)
2000: Christus
2000: Symphonies (Solti)
2000: Via Crucis & Missa Choralis (Best)
2001: Choral Music for Male Voices
2004: Piano Sonata in B minor
2004: St. Stanislaus
2005: Hungarian Rhapsodies (Dorati)
2006: Piano Concertos (Thibaudet)
2007: Orchestral & Concertante (Masur)
    •  Symphonic Poems 1 - 4
    •  Symphonic Poems 5 - 8
    •  Symphonic Poems 9 - 12
    •  Faust Symphony
    •  Dante Symphony
    •  Symphonic Poems & Symphonies (5CD set)
    •  Piano Concertos
    •  Piano Concertante Music
2007: Legend of St. Elisabeth
2009: Male Choruses I
2010: Male Choruses II
2011: Dante Symphony & Sonata (Barenboim)
2022: Septem Sacramenta (Evidence)
2023: Orchestral Songs (Aparte)

Bits 'n Bobs
Here I will stream individual pieces by the composer I no longer have in my collection, or I haven't fully reviewed as of yet. Often I will mix other genres than those titled in the posts links below.

    •  Cantatas & Hymns

    •  Concertante Music

    •  Incidental Music

    •  Legend of St. Elizabeth

    •  Orchestral Works