Guide to "Années de Pèlerinage, Premiere Année: Suisse" by Liszt

[pianobern69]

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

[perfect_pitch]

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?

[pianobern69]

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.

[anacrusis]

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?

[thesixthsensemusic]

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.

[pianobern69]

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

[pianobern69]

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.