The book of Liszt

Yikes, I should just let this Web log go. I never write in it any more. I have been so busy and then often when I try to write the computer messes up on me and I end up walking away.

Maybe I should make a last stand. So often through the week I walk around with something on my mind I want to write about.

Today it is Schubert songs arranged by Liszt.

I have been working on a few of them in my spare time. I am doing "Das Wandern" and "Der Muller und der Bach" from "Die Schoene Mullerin." I also have "Wohin" lying around and that will be next.

The challenge with these pieces of course is that you have to keep them flowing smoothly at the same time that Liszt is bending and stretching your hand in all these different directions.

Listen to how Rachmaninoff pulls it off.



What a romantic he must have been, you know? The way he plays the Serenade. His hands are not always together which ordinarily would bug me but in this case you have to forgive it,.

And I like how he does "Das Wandern." A few other pianists I listened to were too clinical with it. Too staccato, too, with the introduction. I have listened to that song cycle millions of times and that intro does not have to be choppy.

Anyway we are back to the idea of David Dubal, play the piano daily and stay sane. I get my little half hour with these pieces as long as I have gotten in my other work. It is a kind of reward. It is funny because you walk over to the piano with a glass of wine and an hour later the wine is still sitting there. That does not happen too often!

You heard the man.

Play the piano daily and stay sane!

Valentina's Day

There is this powerhouse Ukrainian-born pianist, Valentina Lisitsa. This morning Howard and I were watching her play Liszt's "La Campanella." One of Howard's friends emailed him the clip.

That is some beautiful Liszt! And her hands and her manner are so relaxed. Darn, I am trying and trying to post it. Something is screwy this morning with my computer and it will not allow me to. Anyway, look it up on YouTube, Lisitsa, La Campanella.

We then watched Beethoven's "Appassionata." Pause for appreciation of my life: not only listening to the "Appassionata" before I have had my second cup of coffee, but having a husband who will listen to it too and discuss it.

I am one lucky gal!

Howard liked Lisitsa's "Appassionata" more than I did. While I admired the music's excitement I thought Lisitsa was kind of chilly and rough with it and could have done more to bring out the piece's beauties and subtleties. But I have big feelings for this music and a lot of requirements and many of these are very personal, so keep that in mind.

Howard said it was all worth it for the last 30 seconds of the last movement. My computer does seem to be letting me post this.

Of course, as he said, "The software is unbelievable."

Beethoven builds in a lot of thrill!

It is fun to read about Valentina Lisitsa. The names are wonderful. Valentina is a beautiful name, and Lisitsa sounds like Liszt. Her husband has the incredible name of Alexei Kuznetsoff. Together they entered the Murray Dranoff Two-Piano Competition. That is another great name, Dranoff.

This was an inspiring way to start the day!

The prince of passion

This morning on my way to church I tuned into the classical station, and this outrageous piece poured out at me. It was intriguing at first, and I liked it. Then this chorus came in, and it was just too much.

"Oh, no," I said. And I turned the radio off.

Then after a few minutes I turned it back on.

The piece was still iffy but then it seemed I was making out something I knew. It was the old "Crusader's Hymn," this German medieval hymn I know from church.

Anyone who will include the "Crusader's Hymn" in a piece gets my vote!

So I stayed tuned in. I got to church and I had to get out of the car but I waited through the piece's ending, which was outrageous. The whole piece was just, I don't know, overblown? But I liked it too. I was drawn to it.

What was it? I found out. It was "St. Elizabeth" by Franz Liszt.

Liszt!! Of course! Today is his 200th birthday.

There was supposed to be a Google Doodle. Here is a picture I found of it, complete with cool photograph of Liszt.

I guess they got it in Europe and I was kind of excited about seeing it today. But I guess it is not on our continent. That Google Doodle of Franz Liszt, they regulate it like crack cocaine over here. Boo to Google. That is what I wrote on Twitter. Booooo.

They have no problems making Doodles to honor the guy who made up the Muppets and this woman who drew pictures for Disney -- that one was the other day -- but today, Google is Liszt-less.

Fie!

The "St. Elizabeth" -- or "St. Elisabeth," I guess it would be in German -- I found at least a piano version of it on YouTube. That sweet thrilling old hymn I love starts at 2:10.



I like Franz Liszt. I love how you can see him in photographs. The camera, reaching into the past, showing us what Liszt looked like!

And his music. It sounds as if he had a spirit too big for his body.

You can see why Wagner admired him. Here was a guy whose philosophy, it seems to me, could be summed up as "Why stop here?"

Wandering the 'Net I see that Alex Ross from The New Yorker has written a neat Web log post about Liszt's "Christus" and Wagner's "Parsifal." This is funny, you always think of Liszt as a lot older than Wagner because Wagner married Liszt's daughter, Cosima. But Liszt was born in 1811 and Wagner was born in 1813.

No celebration of the artistry of Franz Liszt is complete without Leonard Pennario.



Franz Liszt's birthday is a wonderful birthday to celebrate.

Doodle or no doodle.

Liszt and self-indulgence

Today on my Pennario Web log I found myself talking about a walk I took yesterday to the beach. I was listening to Jorge Bolet, pictured above, playing Liszt's arrangement of the overture to Wagner's "Tannhauser."

They were playing that on the Historic Pianists podcast out of Aspen Public Radio. The host, Andrew Todd, advised us not to try this at home. Ha, ha!

When I got home I found the Bolet recording on YouTube. It is here!

The second part of it is here.

There is no Great Pianists of the 20th Century CD set devoted to Leonard Pennario. Grrrrr. Boooooooooooo! Well, one day that will surely change.

I have a confession to make. I love these overblown Liszt treatments.

Once I asked my piano teacher, Stephen Manes, if I could play the Liszt arrangement of the Prelude and Liebestod from "Tristan und Isolde." Stephen said oh, Mary, that is so self-indulgent.

I went running to Earl Wild. I told him what Stephen had said. OK, full disclosure: I was calling Earl Wild to interview him for the paper. But I could not resist phrasing it the way I did. Because it was not long after I had that conversation, about "Tristan."

Earl Wild thought Stephen was out of line.

He said: "What's wrong with being self-indulgent?"

What a great philosophy to have!

Stephen gave me the Berg sonata to play instead and I have to say, it was a satisfactory substitute. I grew to love that strip tease of a piece, I will say that.

But I still would like to play "Tristan."

What's wrong with being self-indulgent? Wild is right.

Here is the man himself playing Liszt.

The book of Liszts

It is hard to get the hang of Twitter but I figure that because I am writing that book about Leonard Pennario I should be twittering, as they say. So every now and then I check in and I twitter something. I have maybe 6 followers and they are all buddies of mine here in Buffalo so it does not matter what I am twittering.

Today I threw it on up there that I am listening to Liszt. Because that was what I was doing. My tweet, if you can stand this cutesy lingo, read:

"Mary Kunz Goldman is listening to Liszt which is a heck of a thing to listen to before you are through with your first cup of coffee."

Deep!

Then I decided to search around and see what else people were writing about Liszt. I hit "Search" and typed in "Liszt."

Interesting what people have been writing about Liszt in the last 24 hours.

"You should balance out that Brahms with some Franz Liszt."

"Stupid 80's cartoons. Whenever I listen to Liszt's 1st piano concerto the first thing I think about is Gargamel."

"Schubert - Soiree De Vienne No 6 [arranged by Liszt] Pianist Leonard Pennario." (Hmmm, nice. That came from PlayClassicalUK which I imagine must be a radio station.)

"To help my mood I'm listening to one of the most beautiful pieces of music; Liszt's Piano Concerto No 2."

"To help my mood I'm listening to one of the most beautiful pieces of music; Liszt's Piano Concerto No 2. It beats his first *hands down*..." (From the same person)

"life is never too short for some Liszt :-)"

That is for sure.

For a moment I could see the charm of this Twitter business. You can see the glittering thread that is Liszt going all over the world, binding us together, in this one brief segment of time.

Then that moment passed.

Here is the oddball piece I was listening to that got me on to all this. When it is finally the weekend and I can breathe instead of writing these scattered, rushed communiques, it would be interesting to discuss it.

I can't wait till I have time to do more than twitter.