Alfred Brendel on Music by Alfred Brendel

Author:Alfred Brendel [Brendel, Alfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907532702
Publisher: MBI

(1961)

Liszt and the Piano Circus—An Afterthought

The denigration of Liszt has long since passed its peak. Today one almost has to defend him from those admirers who tend to see the whole nineteenth century as a kind of pianists’ circus and would gladly subscribe funds for research into the achievements of Friedrich Kalkbrenner.

Yet the extent to which the circus is reflected in concert-giving should not be underestimated. The interpreter puts himself on display: a juggler, tightrope-walker and trapeze-artist of piano playing, he performs tricks which even the supremely assured amateur would not believe himself capable of, and although he is not literally risking his neck, he does hazard his prestige for effortless security. It is this security of smoothly working reflexes rather than the communication of musical essentials which even today draws many deeply serious listeners to the concert hall, unaware of their motivation.

The engraving on the title page of Liszt’s paraphrase of Halévy’s La Juive (see here) provides visible evidence of the fact that Liszt himself has contributed to the pianistic spectacular. Of course, his mastery of the instrument practically knew no bounds. But what musical daring underlies the pyrotechnics! How far removed Liszt’s display is from the antics of the musical lightweights of his century whose bravura concertos have become the recent passion of a limited group of specialists! And, leaving the circus arena behind, how naturally did Liszt’s music react to the Swiss countryside, to Italian works of art or to the deaths of Hungarian friends! While it is being debated whether Henselt, Scharwenka or Moszkowski is to be preferred, even the best works of Smetana—whose Polkas had a similar place in the music of his native country to that of Chopin’s Mazurkas and Polonaises in Polish music—still remain virtually unknown.

That some of Liszt’s own major piano works have fared no better is exemplified by the neglect of his Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen. To me this is one of his most moving masterpieces. The stature of his original piano version—so vastly superior to the subsequent version for organ—is emphasized by the dedication to Anton Rubinstein, the century’s other pianistic genius. Young pianists who played the work for Liszt in his last years were ironically informed by the master that ‘this piece is a total flop’; how could anyone play such sombre ‘hospital music’ when art was supposed to be cheerful? Liszt produced a superb example of programme music at its most emotional, and least pictorial. A very wide range of human suffering is suggested with almost austere concentration. Chromaticism stands for suffering and insecurity, while ‘pure’ diatonic harmony, introduced at the conclusion of the piece, represents the certainty of faith. We are reminded of the opening of Haydn’s Creation, where Chaos and Light follow one another in a comparable way. In Liszt’s work ‘Light’ is identical with the chorale ‘Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan’, which, incidentally, also closes Bach’s Cantata. Liszt succeeds in offering relief without a trace of triviality: the entry of the chorale is a miracle of tenderness.

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