Transcendent Virtuosity Piano Music from and Inspired by Italy
Har r y Haskell
A peerless virtuoso known for his “transcendental” keyboard technique, Franz Liszt took Europe by storm in the early 1800s. Only the Italian violinist Nicolò Paganini and a handful of other charismatic performers matched his superstar appeal. As audiences in city after city succumbed to an epidemic of “Lisztomania,” the Hungarian’s name became a byword for showmanship as well as technical wizardry. The conductor Charles Hallé described Liszt at the piano as “all sunshine and dazzling splendor, subjugating his hearers with a power that none could withstand. For him there were no difficulties of execution, the most incredible seeming child’s play under his fingers.” The 19th-century cult of the virtuoso had deeps roots in earlier eras. Johann Sebastian Bach was best known to his contemporaries as an unequalled performer on the organ and harpsichord. According to an early biographer, he “acquired such a high degree of facility and, we may almost say, unlimited power over his instrument … that difficulties almost ceased to exist for him.” Domenico Scarlatti’s far-flung fame likewise rested largely upon the “elegance and delicacy of expression” that one observer discerned in his harpsichord playing. The distinction between the virtuosity implicit in Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, Luciano Berio’s Five Variations, Ferruccio Busoni’s Bach transcriptions, and Liszt’s tone poems and etudes is one of kind rather than degree. The “Fanciful Flights” of Scarlatti The 18th century saw far-reaching changes in both musical styles and instruments. Even as the harpsichord was gradually eclipsed by the more powerful and expressive piano, so the crystalline harmonies and contrapuntal complexity of Baroque music gave way to the elegant simplicity of the galant style and the more sophisticated tonal language of Classicism. A prime mover in that transition was Domenico 12
