Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Piano Sonata in Bm, S.178
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From early in his concert career Liszt had included his own music alongside the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, Chopin and others. After hearing the astounding virtuosity of Paganini, Liszt's worked to redefine piano technique in his Grandes Etudes de Paganini.
As Liszt's grew as a composer he increasingly found a new deeply felt spiritual voice in his music, with many compositions being inspired by literature, poetry or paintings.
The Sonata, dedicated to Robert Schumann and published in 1854, covers an extraordinary range of contrasting styles and techniques within its single movement. Bravura virtuosity, a formal three-part fugue and the most sensitive pianissimo moments all become part of this masterpiece.
Almost the entire work is built from a few fragments on the opening page: soft drum beats and descending scales (bars 1-7); leaping octaves with descending dominant 7th arpeggios (bars 8-13); and a "hammering" motif in the bass (bars 14-17).
These tunes are so instantly memorable that their reappearances and reworkings can be readily identified as the music develops. For example, the hammering played slowly in the treble becomes a richly romantic theme for the central section, but then combines with the second motif to become the main subject of an energetic fugue.
To these ideas is added a grandiose theme, underscored by pulsating chords (3' 23"). This archetypal example of a "big tune" from the Romantic era appears four times.
The transformations of the basic material constitutes the core of Liszt's concept, presenting ideas that are immediately recognizable but reharmonized, lengthened, shortened, combined or played at a different tempo. The same musical seeds flower into vastly different musical ideas and moods as the listener is taken on a journey of discovery in one of the greatest piano works ever written.
- Notes by Gregory Lewis