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Topic: Liszt - Phantasy and Fugue on BACH  (Read 3056 times)

Offline andhow04

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Liszt - Phantasy and Fugue on BACH
on: July 19, 2012, 01:37:30 PM
here is the grand and very dark phantasy and fugue on BACH, a major piece of liszt's. i put this piece in the camp of works like totentanz (to which there is more than one similarity), pieces that are austere, obsessive over one theme, and have little to no lyrical relief.  the opening of the fugue in this piece is quiet, but lyrical is not the word one would attach to it.

while this piece is filled with fast articulated octaves, blazing arpeggios and huge leaps, i have to say it is not the most challenging technically of liszt's pieces.  i found spanish rhapsody, which i also played recently, to be much more demanding.  tthe phantasy and fugue however is very difficult to put together on a musical level. not until the last page does he settle into any harmony for certain, and once the fugue gets going, it never stops gaining intensity to the end. it is challenging to make this felt, and to attract the audience to this chromatic, at times ugly music.

i hhave a theory that liszt was struggling with the spirit of bach in thsi music; here is what i wrote in the program notes for the concert:

"Franz Liszt is most famous for his works that combine satanic virtuosity with angelic charm - pieces that thunder with double octaves on one page, and delight with lush harmony and brilliant roulades on the next.  The sonata in b minor, Mephisto Waltz, the concerti, ballades, and several others pieces fall into this genre.  Roughly speaking, in this style Liszt explores the characters of Mephistopheles and Gretchen; the conniving and the innocent.

      The Phantasy and Fugue falls into another category, one altogether more unsettled, uncompromising, modernistic, and less balanced.  The satanic virtuosity and anguished harmony never gives way to soft sentiment, delight, or sweetness.  No tonality can even be determined until the last page, which is finally in B-flat major.  The texture shifts wildly and sometimes incoherently; the only constant is the obsessive repetition of the theme B-A-C-H (in the German musical alphabet, B is B-flat, and H is B natural).  The theme is transformed and developed in the Lisztian style, providing all the material for the different textures, but more than that, it acts as a ghost haunting every measure of the score.

      In this unusual piece, Liszt struggles with the very spirit of the Old Master, the great Bach who wrote music with no audience, sometimes with no particular instruments, in mind, for the pure spiritual experience - the great Bach who was the master of the inventio, of the most rich music from the greatest economy of material - the Bach who effortlessly found communion with the divine but pushed himself ever to higher plateaus - this Bach haunts Liszt, Liszt the narcissist, Liszt who would have been nothing without the adoration of his fellow human beings, who used music for immoral seduction and earthly hedonism; this is the struggle that gave birth to this demonic and fundamentally weird piece. 

      It seems Liszt saw in his obsession and fear of Bach his old constant dichotomy: striving for heaven, but commanding the flames of hell; desiring the innocence of Gretchen but condemned eternally to destroy it, to burn it away.  The flames do burn in this phantasy, with a particularly terrible heat; they burn through all conventions of harmony, meter and musical logic - but they also purify.  After a huge climax where the entire piano literally quakes and trembles, from the lowest register to the highest, Liszt is victorious over the ghost - the last page is a triumphant fanfare of B-flat major, as Liszt conquers the past and blazes forward into the future."



testing out a new microphone arrangement instead of that ridiculous little tunetalk, i am not really sure if i have the right balance but anyways comments on the recordinga spect of course welcome

Offline johnmar78

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Re: Liszt - Phantasy and Fugue on BACH
Reply #1 on: July 24, 2012, 05:07:46 PM
thanks for playing Liszt works, something differnt from Bach.

Offline rachfan

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Re: Liszt - Phantasy and Fugue on BACH
Reply #2 on: July 24, 2012, 09:39:09 PM
Hi andhow,

I've heard a lot of Liszt, but never this piece, so it was nice being introduced to it.  And thanks for your commentary on the piece as well.  It has a very colossal sound with its dense chromatic chords.  It would think it would be difficult to maintain clarity in this work, but you do very well with that.  It would probably take more than one hearing to absorb it all.  Even at that, you played it very convincingly.

The recording quality sounded fine to me.

Thanks for sharing this fantasy with us.  

David
Interpreting music means exploring the promise of the potential of possibilities.

Offline andhow04

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Re: Liszt - Phantasy and Fugue on BACH
Reply #3 on: July 25, 2012, 02:51:03 AM
thanks for playing Liszt works, something differnt from Bach.


you're.... welcome?  i guess i estbalished a kind of reuptation... if you look at my index though linked in my signature u see that i posted music from ton of differnet composers including beethoven, medtner, messiaen, rachmaninoff, ravel, livign composers, etc. right now doing the wtc does take a lot of attention... but those are all still there

Offline diegocaetano

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Re: Liszt - Phantasy and Fugue on BACH
Reply #4 on: July 27, 2012, 08:28:05 AM
So cool

Offline andhow04

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Re: Liszt - Phantasy and Fugue on BACH
Reply #5 on: July 29, 2012, 05:03:14 PM
Hi andhow,

I've heard a lot of Liszt, but never this piece, so it was nice being introduced to it.  And thanks for your commentary on the piece as well.  It has a very colossal sound with its dense chromatic chords.  It would think it would be difficult to maintain clarity in this work, but you do very well with that.  It would probably take more than one hearing to absorb it all.  Even at that, you played it very convincingly.

The recording quality sounded fine to me.

Thanks for sharing this fantasy with us.  

David

thanks so much for listening to this pretty long piece, and commenting. i can't believe i forgot to mention in my printed notes, the most basic fact about this piece, which is that it was originally for organ.  liszt made this arrangement, which follows the same form but is quite different because he fills in all the possibilities on the piano that can't really be done on organ.

i'm surprised you don't know it at all, given the breadth of your repertoire, but it is an unusual and strange piece.  it's often played by organists i think, who have a couple of virtuosic things from Liszt to play. i personally prefer ito n the piano...
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