As if this is an objective poll, you people will just put down which liszt composition you like best.. No matter what 'valid' arguements you come up with, it's a matter of taste in the end..
piano sonata & Faust symphony
If you think music is 100% subjective you've got something to learn.
Frankly I find Liszt's music a big bore, except for the Hungarian Rhapsodies, which I love, and some of the transcriptions, which I enjoy in small doses. Once in a while Un Sospiro, but Victor Borge killed off the Liebestraum forever.Unfortunately every blinking pianist these days thinks they have to have Liszt in their repertoire. But at any given moment there are maybe 2-3 performers in the world who have both the technique and the musicianship to make him worth listening to.
What do you think about is piano concerto no1 and Les Aneés de Pellegrinage, that includes compositions like Switzerland - Oberman Valey? This last composition is fourteen minutes boring work with small lightnings of beautiful melodies... What do you all think about them?
Ballade No. 2, Harmonies Poetiques et Religiouses, Annees des Pelerinage "Italy", Trancriptions on Wagner's "Isolde's Liebestod" and "Overture to Tannhauser", Symphonic Poems, Piano Concerto No. 2Best, not favorite.
Maybe not favourite but still a subjective list. It's generally argued the symphonic poems are ceratinly not all equal in quality and the Sonata is his 'best' piano work. However I'm not getting into an arguement over this.
Get ready, Soliliquy. Here we go:The Liszt Sonata is cast in a "double structure." It is in an enormous Sonata Allegro form, complete with exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. Simultaneously, it is in a four-movement form, including a Sonatina form first movement, complete sonata form 2nd movement, a fugato/scherzo third movement, and a finale. I have actually argued that there may be a scherzo within the sonatina form first movement, creating a symmetrical structure of Fast/Scherzo/Slow/Scherzo/Fast. A structure of this kind was not imitated until 1901, nearly 50 years later, when Schoenberg wrote his first chamber symphony.When it comes to tonality, we have B minor defined as tonic at measure 18 or 35 (forgive me, it's been 10 months since my paper.) We leave it soon and never return to it until m. 535, the recapitulation. This is a double return, heralded by an enormous climax and a spectacular ride. The second movement is in the Tonic major, which is unusual for a minor key, but not unusual if you consider Liszt's choices for tonality in his second subject sections. Interestingly enough, Liszt's tonalities have specific ideas or moods attached. D minor is the key of death and damnation, Ab the key of love, E Major the religious mode, F# major representing the distant or unattainable, for example. The andante sostenuto is in F# major.When it comes to discussions of climax, there are 7 places in the sonata which are marked FFF. While other climaxes rival it in terms of sheer volume, that in the climax of the Andante Sostenuto has the greatest emotional pull and therefore, it should be differentiated as such. Hope you have a better understanding of the sonata now,Daniel
Get ready, Soliliquy. Here we go:Interestingly enough, Liszt's tonalities have specific ideas or moods attached. D minor is the key of death and damnation, Ab the key of love, E Major the religious mode, F# major representing the distant or unattainable, for example. The andante sostenuto is in F# major.Daniel
Topic: Liszt best compositions 