Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 50

Read About This Recording

Not long ago, Leslie Howard finished recording every last squiggle that Franz Liszt jotted for solo piano. It took nearly 15 years and 95 CDs. Musical Heritage Society is not making this entire series available; you can get the discs we’ve passed over from other sources, at a higher price. The items we did think you’d find irresistible, though, represent a fair chunk of Howard’s survey. Here we present Volume 5 of Liszt’s piano music drawn from the operas of others. These are all two-disc sets, which means we’re up to 10 CDs so far; one more volume is yet to come. Do the math and you’ll see that opera “paraphrases” constitute a little more than one-eighth of Liszt’s piano output. Talk about an opera nut!

Leslie Howard, obviously, is a Liszt nut, although that happened gradually. The Australian-born pianist wrote his master’s thesis on Liszt — hardly an unusual choice — then moved to England to become an all-around Romantic pianist. Then came 1986, the centenary of Liszt’s death and the 175th anniversary of his birth. Howard saw it as an irresistible opportunity to perform all of the composer’s original solo piano works in a series of recitals around the world. The English label Hyperion proposed recording a bit of this music and before long the project was including everything Howard had already played and then some.

The present installment of the opera series is devoted to some thrice-familiar tunes by Wagner and Rossini, as well as melodies that probably haven’t been heard since Liszt’s day. Auber is now remembered only for a couple of overtures; here you’ll find an aria from Auber’s otherwise forgotten La Fiancée as the basis of a set of bravura variations (an earlier, longer version of this is included in a previous volume), as well as a big tarantella drawn from his La Muette de Portici. There’s also a “fantaisie brillante” on Halévy’s once popular La Juive and splashy treatments of material from an opera by the now completely forgotten Pacini.

Slightly more familiar objects of Liszt’s fascination are Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (if only because Liszt wrote so many fantasies on the blasted thing), Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, Bellini’s La Sonnambula and, of course, Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. There’s also a straight but virtuosic transcription of Rossini’s William Tell Overture.

You’d think Howard would be exhausted after all this, but not so. Still another volume of Liszt at the Opera awaits MHS release and Leslie Howard is Liszt’s indefatigable one-man band.

—James Reel

Quotes

"He plays here not only with his usual technical facility and understanding of the Lisztian idiom, but also with verve, wit and an enjoyment that he conveys to the listener." —American Record Guide

Contents

Operatic Fantasies, Paraphrases and Transcriptions based on: Auber: La Fiancée: Souvenir de La fiancée; La muette de Portici: Tarantella (di bravura); Bellini: La sonambula: Fantasie on themes from the opera (second version); Donizetti: Lucrezia Borgia: Fantasie on themes from the opera; Halévy: La Juive: Réminiscences de La juive, Fantaisie brillante; Meyerbeer: Les Hugenots: Réminiscences des Hugenots; Pacini: Niobe: Grande fantaisie sur thèmes de l’opéra; Rossini: William Tell: Overture; Wagner: Tannhäuser: Entry of the Guests into the Wartburg; Lohengrin: Festspiel und Brautlied.

Leslie Howard, Piano.