Franz Liszt was the great populariser of ‘modern
music’ during the nineteenth century. During his long life he
poured out a series of paraphrases, transcriptions and variations on
music by fellow-composers. His sound instincts led him to espouse the
music of the greatest of his romantic colleagues. These works fall basically
into two groups. The first of these were the barnstorming virtuoso pieces
intended for his own performance during his touring recitals. The second
were more straightforward transcriptions designed to make the music
available to good amateur performers to encounter and get to know the
music in the privacy of their own homes. His transcription of the Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique - in which incidentally he confirms that
Berlioz imagined the bells in the final movement in the lowest register,
and not the tinny tubular bells we so often hear today - helped to establish
the fame of the composer in Germany. He followed this up with the version
of
Harold in Italy which we are given here. However although
the transcription was written in 1838, it was later revised and was
not published until 1881 by which time Berlioz was long dead.
It has to be said that Berlioz, the master of the orchestra, is not
best served by the performance of his music on the piano, no matter
how excellent the transformation of the orchestral textures in terms
of the keyboard. However the
Symphonie fantastique is given a
new dimension in Liszt’s version, revealing facets of the score
that otherwise might be overlooked.
Harold in Italy is less successful.
This is largely because of the nature of the work itself. It was originally
intended as a virtuoso vehicle for Niccolo Paganini, who wanted to show
off his recently acquired Stradivarius viola. What Berlioz produced
was not the barnstorming concerto that Paganini anticipated, but a symphony
with viola obbligato. The soloist remains silent for long stretches
throughout the first movement and the viola plays almost nothing at
all during the finale. Liszt faithfully adheres to Berlioz’s intentions,
allowing the viola to deliver only what Berlioz wrote for the instrument.
This is with one exception, to which I will come in due course. In a
version for viola and piano this really exposes the disproportionate
nature of the solo contribution. One can only imagine what the impression
on stage would be during the finale as the viola stands silent while
the piano ploughs through the extravagances of the brigands’ orgy.
I understand that when Dukes and Lane performed the arrangement at the
Purcell room a couple of years ago, Dukes left the stage during the
finale and played his final dying bars from offstage, a dramatic effect
that would work well although it is not clear whether that procedure
was followed in this recording.
Even without the possibility of such visual distractions, however, the
transcription otherwise works surprisingly well in this performance.
This is largely due to the excellently contrived balance between viola
and piano. Other recorded performances of this arrangement that I have
heard tend to spotlight the viola, with the result that the balance
of the work is disturbed. Here, quite correctly, the emphasis is placed
on the piano, and the reverberant acoustic helps successfully to conjure
up the richness of Berlioz’s writing. Indeed, even too much so
in the opening bars, where the ominous bass mutterings sound considerably
more present than Berlioz’s
pianissimo marking in the orchestral
score would imply. Philip Dukes is well integrated into the sound picture,
and his ethereal arpeggios in the Pilgrims’ March have just the
right sense of musing distance. Piers Lane is rather brisk in this movement,
but one recognises that without the sustaining sounds of the orchestra
the music could easily appear to grind to a halt, and the fault - if
indeed it is one - errs on the right side. The mountaineer’s serenade
is lively, and in the repeat of the opening material Dukes is given
some additional material, appropriating the orchestral viola line to
provide a sort of drone bass. I don’t recall this from other performances
I have heard. Presumably it derives from one or another of Liszt’s
revisions of the arrangement. It works so well that one wonders why
Liszt did not go further and compose some additional material for the
viola in the lengthy finale. This however generally comes over most
successfully. Liszt does however rather miss the sense of sheer excitement
in the reiterated violin figure in the central section, substituting
some more conventional piano figurations which lack the requisite driven
mania (track 4, 5.45). Nonetheless Dukes and Lane make out the best
possible case for this version of the score.
More interesting however is the Liszt
Romance oubliée,
a transcription made in his later years of his 1844 song
Oh pourquoi
donc. Actually it is far more than a simple transcription, substituting
the viola for the voice. It is a free improvisatory contemplation on
the melodic material of the song, and the viola arpeggios in the final
bars echo the similar use of the sound in the Pilgrims’ March
in
Harold - surely not a coincidence. The freely rhapsodic viola
line has a sense of poised beauty which anticipates in some measure
the similar use of solo string instrument and piano in later works such
as Vaughan Williams’
Lark ascending. The work is quite
familiar in its versions for violin and cello, but the original viola
version is much rarer and it is a delight to encounter it here. There
is also a piano
Romance based on the same song, which bears but
tangential resemblances to the version here.
Even better is the Kurt Roger
Sonata, not at all the kind of
work that one might have anticipated from a pupil of Schoenberg writing
in 1948. Indeed the opening movement, with its swingeing chordal writing
for the piano, could well have been written fifty years earlier. The
booklet note informs us that the work is sometimes known as the
Irish
Sonata, and indeed from this sonata-form movement one could well
imagine that one is hearing an undiscovered work by Stanford. There
are indeed some Irish folk elements apparent, and in the later movements
- with their strict counterpoint - one can also detect echoes of Moeran
and Alan Bush. This is not simple imitation; there is an original voice
at work here. The Gould Piano Trio have already given us a Naxos disc
of Roger’s chamber music, and although only one item on that disc
- the delightful
Variations on an Irish air - is as immediately
attractive as this
Viola Sonata, one suspects that the composer’s
output could well bear further investigation (
review).
So buy this CD especially for the Roger
Sonata, and also for
the original version of Liszt’s
Romance. You’ll also
get a superb performance of the somewhat problematic Berlioz transcription
as well.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
