in 'a history of the concerto' by michael thomas roeder - some interesting stuff about this third concerto. 'liszt may have composed one more concerto. it has an interesting history, and although no autograph manuscript has been located, there is strong evidence that the lost concerto has been found. in august 1885 liszt wrote to his favorite and very successful female pupil , sophie menter (1846-1918), telling her he was writing a concerto for her. he had not orchestrated the work before his death the following year, so menter received the work in unusable form. the russian composer tchaikovsky (1840-1893) knew menter, visiting her at her home in the tyrol on several occasions. she asked him to orchestrate the work,identifying it as her own 'hungarian concerto.' this ruse was employed out of fear that tchaikovsky would not tackle the job because of his displeasure with some of liszt's pianotranscriptions of the russian's orchestral music. tchaikovsky completed the task in 1892 and conducted the work's first performance in st. petersburg in 1893, shortly before his own death, with menter as pianist. a few months later the score was published as sophie menter's hungarian concerto, orchestrated by tchaikovsky.
menter probably destroyed liszt's manuscript for obvious reasons, so that for nearly a century the world knew only that liszt composed a concerto that had been lost, and that tchaikovsky had orchestrated a concerto in the hungarian style thought to have been written by menter. during the 1980's, however, liszt scholars and performers came to regard the hungarian concerto as liszt's. there is no hard evidence supporting this hypothesis, although a close friend of menter's allegedly overheard her confess to having presented liszt's work to tchaikovsky as her own. the work possesses many of those traits associated with liszt's writing, including a one-movement rhapsodic form with alternating fast and slow sections, genuine thematic unity, and quite obvious virtuoso pianistic style.'
Topic: Liszt - Pianoconcerto No. 3