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Topic: Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt  (Read 5205 times)

Offline pianobern69

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Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt
on: May 05, 2022, 06:25:54 PM
How would you rank the 9 pieces from the "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt?
My personal ranking would look like this (least to most difficult):

Eglogue
Les Mal Du Pays
Les Cloches De Genève
Pastorale
Au Lac de Wallenstadt
Chappelle De Guillaume Tell
Valle d'Obermann
Au bord d'un Source
Orage

Link to Lazar Berman's 1977 recording with sheet music:
&t=1013s

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Offline perfect_pitch

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Re: Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt
Reply #1 on: May 05, 2022, 10:10:02 PM
Why is it at least half of the posts you write are accompanied by videos on your YouTube site???

Trying to fish for views, are we?
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Offline pianobern69

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Re: Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt
Reply #2 on: May 06, 2022, 07:05:11 AM
Not at all, it's just that I really like talking about those recordings and no one is commenting at all on YouTube. One would barely get any views from this page anyway (I'm not complaining). I honestly really love this forum as opposed to for example reddit, which is full of negativity.
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Offline anacrusis

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Re: Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt
Reply #3 on: May 06, 2022, 01:24:51 PM
I love this forum too! I think it's fine that you're posting these recordings. My favourite is Valle d'Obermann for sure! Or do you mean ranking in terms of difficulty?
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Offline thesixthsensemusic

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Re: Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt
Reply #4 on: May 08, 2022, 02:44:51 AM
Quote from: pianobern69 on May 05, 2022, 06:25:54 PM
How would you rank the 9 pieces from the "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt?
My personal ranking would look like this (least to most difficult):

Eglogue
Les Mal Du Pays
Les Cloches De Genève
Pastorale
Au Lac de Wallenstadt
Chappelle De Guillaume Tell
Valle d'Obermann
Au bord d'un Source
Orage

Link to Lazar Berman's 1977 recording with sheet music:
&t=1013s
Personally I'd put Vallee d'Obermann after Au Bord d'une Source. Memory lapses in such a big piece (with lots of passages which are not hard, so you will tend to practice them less) are a real issue. Au Bord d'Une Source is hard throughout and you will likely learn the entire work just via motoric memorisation.

It also depends on how you'd play Vallee d'Obermann. compare Ervin Nyiregyházi and France Clidat's recordings. Tempo choices impact the difficulty of the Obermann coda and some of the cadenza parts in between, tremendously, but a slower approach might still yield a good performance and massively cut back on practice time... Ervin Nyiregyházi is at times half as fast as France Clidat and his performances were still received well by major critics like Harold C. Schonberg.

If I had to perform this opus (or any set of works) this long, I'd always have a 'Blattlaus' (page turner) at hand + take the slowest tempo permissible in performance (also relative to other tempi I use) in technically hard passages. Try to balance practice time vs, result at all times.



Hope this helps.
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Offline pianobern69

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Re: Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt
Reply #5 on: May 08, 2022, 01:29:56 PM
Quote from: anacrusis on May 06, 2022, 01:24:51 PM
I love this forum too! I think it's fine that you're posting these recordings. My favourite is Valle d'Obermann for sure! Or do you mean ranking in terms of difficulty?

For a guide, I'd rank them in terms of difficulty, but feel free to share your ranking in terms of your personal enjoyment! My favorite to listen to is probably Au Lac de Wallenstadt, but the most fun (to me at least) to play to are Vallee Doberman and Chapelle De Gaulliame Tell :)
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Offline pianobern69

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Re: Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt
Reply #6 on: May 08, 2022, 01:36:13 PM
Quote from: thesixthsensemusic on May 08, 2022, 02:44:51 AM
Personally I'd put Vallee d'Obermann after Au Bord d'une Source. Memory lapses in such a big piece (with lots of passages which are not hard, so you will tend to practice them less) are a real issue. Au Bord d'Une Source is hard throughout and you will likely learn the entire work just via motoric memorisation.

It also depends on how you'd play Vallee d'Obermann. compare Ervin Nyiregyházi and France Clidat's recordings. Tempo choices impact the difficulty of the Obermann coda and some of the cadenza parts in between, tremendously, but a slower approach might still yield a good performance and massively cut back on practice time... Ervin Nyiregyházi is at times half as fast as France Clidat and his performances were still received well by major critics like Harold C. Schonberg.

If I had to perform this opus (or any set of works) this long, I'd always have a 'Blattlaus' (page turner) at hand + take the slowest tempo permissible in performance (also relative to other tempi I use) in technically hard passages. Try to balance practice time vs, result at all times.



Hope this helps.


Great insight there for sure! I'd definitely recommend a lower tempo for Valle d'Obermann, it's a very depressing, touching piece after all. I'm not a fan of hand-crossing outside of Scarlatti sonatas, so that's why I personally find Au Bord (way) more difficult. I fully agree on the page turner! Lots of people tend to ignore the sometimes weird pedal markings by Liszt, which I think could be the result of not studying the score enough, because most of the practice time will be spent on memorizing. Concert performance with sheet music should be more normalised again if you ask me.
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