Liszt is the only great composer of the nineteenth century who still suffers from detractors, and this despite the acknowledged debt of almost every composer who was his younger contemporary or successor. The trouble started whilst he was alive, of course, when many people simply couldnt cope with his fame and popularity. He was never penurious the starving artist in the garret was someone whom he helped, but someone he never was. In short, he made money, lots of it. He lost track of most of it, and gave away virtually all of it. He never owned property, nor even a coach and horses. He did own pianos, an excellent library, both musical and literary, and he enjoyed the freedom of every court in Europe. Many musicians were jealous of his success, and took Hanslicks line that his compositions came as a kind of afterthought to engender intellectual respectability. This is tosh, of course, and yet aspects of this accusation still linger if Liszt is played cheaply, one can still hear him accused of composing cheaply. And to add insult to injury, he was accused of posturing for taking his religion seriously something which he had done in constancy from a boy and the many facets of his complex character were dismissed as the masks of an actor. It is time that judgments made with this degree of crass ignorance were buried once and for all. Of course, over a composing life of more than sixty years, not every work is a masterpiece, but even the least of his works cannot help but show something of his pioneering spirit and originality. It is a pleasure to note that, finally, the variety of his works in the current repertoire is slowly but surely expanding to show his great range as an artista confirmation, if any were required, that the general level of his output is remarkably high. The Viola Concerto, Sz. BB 128 also known as Concerto for Viola and Orchestra was one of the last pieces written by Bla Bartk. He began composing his viola. January 6, 2014. Andr Tchaikovsky Piano concerto Toccata We now have piano concertos by three composers called Tchaikovsky. The first is written in B flat. Bartok Viola Concerto Piano Pdf Notes' title='Bartok Viola Concerto Piano Pdf Notes' />The limits for space preclude the reissue of all of the programme notes written for the Hyperion Liszt series these may be found elsewhere on this website, but I should like to offer a general introduction to the man and his music, and then offer some observations about the undertaking of this project. Ferenc Franz Liszt 2. October 1. 81. 1 3. July 1. 88. 6Hungarian composer, conductor, pianist and teacherwas born in Raiding now in Austria, the son of Adam Liszt, a minor official on the Esterhzy estate, and his wife Anna, ne Lager. His talent manifested itself very early, and his brief formal education culminated in studies in Vienna, principally with Czerny and Reicha. In 1. 82. 2 he met Beethoven, who bestowed a blessing he counted the most important formative experience of his musical life. At the age of fourteen, he went with his father to Paris, and adopted French to such an extent that it remained his mother tongue for the rest of his life. He later acquired a degree of English and Italian, revived his German, and attempted some Hungarian, but like many distinguished Hungarians of the day, never spoke his countrys language with any fluency. His remaining education, acquired on the hoof, as it were, saw him mixing in the most important social and artistic circles in Paris, reading and practising voraciously, having his only operaDon Sanchegiven in 1. England, and publishing a number of early piano works, principally the tude en quarante huit exercices of which he wrote only twelve, and which would become the thematic source for the later tudes dexcution transcendante. He was a strikingly handsome young man, and in much demand by ladies of all ages, leading to many a legend of sexual conquest, and a fame of altogether greater proportion than the world of art music has seen before or since. But these years also saw the beginnings of Liszts lifelong devotion to Christianity and his interest in some of the more progressive religious philosophies of the day, especially those of Lamartine and Lammenais, whom he knew personally. He met and befriended almost every person of artistic consequence in early 1. Paris, including Paganini, Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Alkan, Hiller, Auber, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Delacroix, Ingres, Hugo, Heine, Balzac, George Sand and Dumas pre. By 1. 83. 5, when he eloped to Switzerland and thence to Italy with the Countess Marie dAgoult, his reputation as a performer was unparalleled, but his work as a composer was relatively unknown. Yet he had already composed several important original works the Apparitions, the single piece entitled Harmonies potiques et religieuses, and the enormous piece for piano and orchestra De profundis among them. Liszts Album dun voyageur and a series of operatic fantasies were composed whilst he lived en famillethe Countess bore him three children Blandine in 1. Cosima in 1. 83. 7, and Daniel in 1. He broke away from time to time to give concerts, eventually playing solo performances, coining the term recital for them. Liszt travelled very widely, played an extraordinary mixture of music to captivate his audiences before daring to play the most serious repertoire, and embarked upon the largest body in musical history of transcriptions and fantasies on other composers works, generally in the spirit of proselytizing discipleship. He also worked on original instrumental and vocal compositions, and a large collection of piano pieces based on Hungarian gypsy melodies. In between, he sketched several piano concertos and raised almost all of the money required to erect a statue to Beethoven in Bonn, for the unveiling of which he composed an excellent cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra. But Liszt knew that the constant travelling over these many years was impeding his work as a composerit was also a serious component reason for the permanent breakdown of his relationship with Marie dAgoult, which had finally taken place in 1. Meanwhile, he had been asked to consider becoming Kapellmeister in Weimara position he eventually took up in 1. Princess Carolyne zu Sayn Wittgenstein, whom he had met in early 1. Although Liszt had written a number of works with piano or voices and orchestra, his output for orchestra alone really began in earnest in Weimar, where he had an orchestra at his constant disposal, staffed by some really fine musicians. He took many risks, and over a period of twelve years conducted much new or controversial repertoire, especially in the opera theatre. Famous premieres include Lohengrin, Alfonso und Estrella and Der Barbier von Baghdad, and famous revivals include Der fliegende Hollnder, Tannhuser, Fidelio, La favorite, Ernani and Benvenuto Cellini. During the 1. 84. Creative Sound Blaster Extigy Software. Weimar he produced a series of twelve symphonic poems Ce quon entend sur la montagne, Tasso, Les prludes, Orpheus, Prometheus, Mazeppa, Festklnge, Herode funbre, Hungaria, Hamlet, Hunnenschlacht and Die Idealea form of his own invention, related to the concert overture. Over these years he revised much of his earlier piano music, reissuing the works under the titles by which they have endured the Annes de plerinage I II, the Rapsodies hongroises, the Grandes tudes de Paganini, the tudes dexcution transcendante and the Harmonies potiques et religieuses now a series of ten pieces. He also reworked many of his earlier songs and, by the end of his tenure in Weimar, published sixty of them. This period also saw the composition of the monumental piano sonata and the two masterful symphonies, one inspired by Goethes Faust, the other by Dantes Divina Commedia.