Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 20: Gnomenreigen, Waldesrauschen & Études de concert

The two concert studies Gnomenreigen (Dance of the Gnomes) and Waldesrauschen (Forest Murmurs) were written in Rome in 1862 and 1863, dedicated to Dionys Pruckner, and intended for Lebert and Stark's Klavierschule. Gnomenreigen, published as the second of the pair, calls for the alternation of hands in a rapid scherzo. Waldesrauschen is an evocative piece, its melody accompanied by gently rippling figuration.

Three other concert studies are dated to 1848 and were published in 1849 with a dedication to Liszt's uncle, Eduard Liszt, in a later version acquiring the titles Il lamento, La leggierezza and Un sospiro. The first study opens with a cadenza that brings with it the descending figure on which the whole work is based. The second, suggesting the language of Chopin, has a brief introduction, its thematic Quasi allegretto moving forward to the more elaborate figuration that follows. The last of the three studies accompanies its now familiar melody, shared between the hands, with arpeggios of mounting intensity, leading to an ending of great serenity.

The Morceau de salon, étude de perfectionnement, was written in 1840 for the Méthode des méthodes de piano by the Belgian composer and theorist François Joseph Fétis. This was revised in 1852 as Ab irato, its anger briefly modified, before a fiercer conclusion.

Mazeppa was derived from material that underwent various changes, from its first appearance as the fourth of the Douze exercices and later emergence in the revisions and developments of that work. The study of this name was written in 1840 and published in 1847, with a dedication to Victor Hugo, on whose poetic treatment of the story it is based. It found further place in Liszt's symphonic poem of the same title. Mazeppa, page to the King of Poland, is found guilty of an intrigue with the wife of a nobleman. Tied to the back of a wild horse, which is whipped into madness, he is carried through forests and across rivers until the horse falls dead on the plains of Ukraine, where Mazeppa is revived by peasants. The wild ride became a subject of romantic interest after Byron's poem of 1819, reflected in Hugo's poem and in a painting by Géricault.

Keith Anderson