The “Sonata in B Minor” dedicated to Schumann is one of the few sonatas in which there is psychological unity throughout. This is due to the fact that it is one movement; although by employing various themes both in rapid and in slow time, Liszt has given it a certain aspect of division into movements. It might well serve as a model to younger composers who think they have to write sonatas. Dannreuther, it is true, says of it that it is “a curious compound of true genius and empty rhetoric,” but admits that it contains enough of genuine impulse and originality in the themes of the opening section, and of suave calm in the melody of the section that stands for the slow movement, to secure the hearer’s attention. Mr. Hanchett’s characterization of it as one of the most masterly compositions ever put into this form—a gigantic, wholly admirable and original work—is more just.
The two pianoforte concertos (in E flat and A major) are superb works. Not only are they written with all the skill which Liszt knew so well how to apply when composing for the instrument, but with this technical perfection they also unite thought and feeling. Like the sonata, they show throughout their development the psychological unity which is so essentially modern. What the pianoforte owes to Chopin and Liszt can be summed up by saying that they were 151 poets and thinkers who took the trouble to thoroughly understand the instrument. Because their music sounds so well on it, at least one of them, Liszt, frequently is stigmatized as a trickster of virtuosity and a charlatan, as if there were some wonderful mark of genius in writing something for one instrument that sounds better on another or may not sound as well as it ought to on any. If Liszt’s pianoforte music is grateful to the player and equally grateful to the listener, it is not only because he knew how to write for the pianoforte, but because, with deep thoughts and poetic feelings, he also understood how to express them clearly and pianistically.
The “Rhapsodies Hongroises” are of such dazzling brilliancy and show off a pianist’s technique to such good purpose and so brilliantly, that their real musical worth has been under-estimated. They are full of splendid fire, vitality and passion, and their rhythmic throb is simply irresistible. Like the Études, their history is curious. At first they were merely short transcriptions of Hungarian tunes. These were elaborated and republished and canceled, and then rewritten and published again. In all there are fifteen pieces in the set, ending with the “Rakoczy March.” As “Ungarische Melodien” they began to appear in 1838; as “Melodies Hongroises” in 1846; as “Rhapsodies Hongroises” in 1854. Consider that they are over fifty years old, yet remain the greatest pieces for the display of brilliant technique and the most grateful works for which a pianist can ask, and that at the same time they are full of admirable musical content! Because they happen to be brilliant and effective they are called 152 trashy, whereas they owe their brilliancy and effectiveness to Liszt’s own transcendent virtuosity, to his knowledge of the pianoforte. In order to be great must music be “classic,” heavy and dull, and badly written for the instrument on which it is to be played?
How Liszt Played.
In those charming reminiscences from which I already have had occasion to quote several times, William Mason’s “Memories of a Musical Life,” Mr. Mason says that time and again at Weimar he heard Liszt play, and that there is absolutely no doubt in his mind that Liszt was the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, what the Germans call an Erscheinung, an epoch-making genius. Tausig said of him: “Liszt dwells alone upon a solitary mountain-top and none of us can approach him.” Rubinstein said to Mr. William Steinway, in the year 1873 (I quote from Mason): “Put all the rest of us together and we would not make one Liszt.” While Mr. Mason willingly acknowledges that there have been other great pianists, some of them now living, he adds: “But I must dissent from those writers who affirm that any of these can be placed upon a level with Liszt. Those who make this assertion are too young to have heard Liszt other than in his declining years, and it is unjust to compare the playing of one who has long since passed his prime with that of one who is still in it.”
Edward Dannreuther, who heard Liszt play from 1863 onward, says that there was about his playing an air of improvisation and the expression of a grand and 153 fine personality, perfect self-possession, grace, dignity and never-failing fire; that his tone was large and penetrating, but not hard, every effect being produced naturally and easily. Dannreuther adds that he has heard performances, it may be of the same pieces, by younger men, such as Rubinstein and Tausig, but that they left an impression as of Liszt at second-hand or of Liszt past his prime. “None of his contemporaries or pupils were so spontaneous, individual and convincing in their playing; and none except Tausig so infallible with their fingers and wrists.”
Liszt himself paid this superb tribute to the pianoforte as an instrument: “To me my pianoforte is what to the seaman is his boat, to the Arab his horse; nay, more, it has been till now my eye, my speech, my life. Its strings have vibrated under my passions and its yielding keys have obeyed my every caprice. It may be that the secret tie which binds me to it so closely is a delusion, but I hold the pianoforte very high. In my view, it takes the first place in the hierarchy of instruments. It is the oftenest used and the widest spread. In the circumference of its seven octaves it embraces the whole range of an orchestra, and a man’s ten fingers are enough to render the harmonies which in an orchestra are brought out only by the combination of hundreds of musicians. The pianoforte has on the one side the capacity of assimilation, the capacity of taking unto itself the life of all instruments; on the other hand it has its own life, its own growth, its own individual development. My highest ambition is to leave to the piano players to come after me, some useful instructions, the footprints of advanced attainment, 154 something which may some day provide a worthy witness of the labor and study of my youth.”
Bear in mind that Liszt played for Beethoven, that he was a contemporary of Chopin and Schumann, that he was one of the first to throw himself heart and soul into the Wagner movement, and that death came to him while he was attending the festival performances at Bayreuth; bear in mind, I repeat, that he played for Beethoven and died at “Parsifal”; strive to appreciate the extremes of musical history and development implied by this; then remember that he remains a potent force in music—and you may be able to form some idea of his greatness.