I’ve never listened to this, although your post makes me think perhaps I should. Liszt’s orchestral works are a very mixed bag—some of them (I’m looking at you, Les Préludes) are truly awful—but I thought the Faust Symphony was surprisingly good. So I may give this one a chance. Thanks for the inspiration.
Glad to hear it! The Faust Symphony does similarly great work (if not better) to the Dante Symphony, in terms of where the movements go and how. But generally, I prefer Liszt's piano works, like the Transcendental Etudes, or his later sacred music, like the later Via Crucis he composed as a Franciscan (themselves based on the stations of the cross).
Liszt’s late music is a world apart, as if it isn’t even by the same guy. Except when you play the piano music for yourself, you realize it very much is. The highs and lows of his work are surprisingly far apart, but the heights are superb. There’s nothing else with the power and intimate grandeur of the sonata anywhere else in the piano literature. Not even the Beethoven 32nd. There. I said it.
A late Lisztian! I like that description, which I've certainly heard but not yet felt (I haven't played any Liszt myself, and he's all over my list for future piano practice). If I were more knowledgeable on Beethoven, I'd find your words ripe for fighting.
Yeah, that was sort of a gauntlet, wasn’t it. Mann used the 32nd for a key bit—well, more than a bit—in Doktor Faustus, so there’s even a Faust connection.
Trying to capture music in words is tough. Trying to capture music that's trying to capture Dante is tougher. Well done, Kevin! I had no idea Liszt became a Franciscan monk. Learned something today.
Thanks for the kind words, Johanna! Writing about music always reminds me how much I envy its ease of sound and evocation: a song can do more with a five-note melody than most paragraphs can make of any of their many stacked devices or flourishes.
I’ve never listened to this, although your post makes me think perhaps I should. Liszt’s orchestral works are a very mixed bag—some of them (I’m looking at you, Les Préludes) are truly awful—but I thought the Faust Symphony was surprisingly good. So I may give this one a chance. Thanks for the inspiration.
Glad to hear it! The Faust Symphony does similarly great work (if not better) to the Dante Symphony, in terms of where the movements go and how. But generally, I prefer Liszt's piano works, like the Transcendental Etudes, or his later sacred music, like the later Via Crucis he composed as a Franciscan (themselves based on the stations of the cross).
Liszt’s late music is a world apart, as if it isn’t even by the same guy. Except when you play the piano music for yourself, you realize it very much is. The highs and lows of his work are surprisingly far apart, but the heights are superb. There’s nothing else with the power and intimate grandeur of the sonata anywhere else in the piano literature. Not even the Beethoven 32nd. There. I said it.
A late Lisztian! I like that description, which I've certainly heard but not yet felt (I haven't played any Liszt myself, and he's all over my list for future piano practice). If I were more knowledgeable on Beethoven, I'd find your words ripe for fighting.
Yeah, that was sort of a gauntlet, wasn’t it. Mann used the 32nd for a key bit—well, more than a bit—in Doktor Faustus, so there’s even a Faust connection.
Trying to capture music in words is tough. Trying to capture music that's trying to capture Dante is tougher. Well done, Kevin! I had no idea Liszt became a Franciscan monk. Learned something today.
Thanks for the kind words, Johanna! Writing about music always reminds me how much I envy its ease of sound and evocation: a song can do more with a five-note melody than most paragraphs can make of any of their many stacked devices or flourishes.