Mephisto Waltz No. 1 I 3 Liebesträume I 3 Sonetti di Petrarca I Funérailles
FRANZ LISZT (1811–1886)
David Wilde piano
Mephisto Waltz No. 1 3 Liebesträume 3 Sonetti di Petrarca Funérailles
1 Mephisto Waltz No. 1
Liebesträume
2 Notturno No. 1
3 Notturno No. 2 [6:39]
4 Notturno No. 3 [4:39]
Tre Sonetti di Petrarca
5 Sonetto 47 [6:16]
6 Sonetto 104 [10:10]
7 Sonetto 123
8 Funérailles
Total playing time
Recorded on 5-6 November 2011 and 3
December 2012 at the Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh
Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital editing & mastering: Paul Baxter Piano: Steinway Model D Grand Piano, 1995, serial no 527910
Piano technician: Norman W. Motion
Photography © Delphian Records
Design: Drew Padrutt
Booklet editor: Henry Howard Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK
With thanks to the University of Edinburgh
Liszt’s fascination with Goethe’s Faust, in particular the subtly demonic character of Mephistopheles, is well known, but it didn’t stop at Goethe; his famous Mephisto Waltz No. 1 is based on an episode in the legend as encapsulated in a poem by Nicholas Lenau. The scene is set at an inn where a marriage has taken place. The company is celebrating and Mephistopheles tempts Faust to seduce the bride, while leading the company in ever wilder dancing. The notion that the violin is the instrument of the devil is here clearly expressed as Mephistopheles tunes his fiddle at the beginning of the dance. In a quieter middle section, as Faust takes the girl into the woods to enjoy the fruits of his ill-gotten gains, a nightingale is heard singing. When they return to the inn, the dance reaches a peak of demonic fury until, in a lull, the nightingale once more serenades the couple. Mephistopheles cannot contain himself, and the work finishes with his derisory laughter of triumph.
Liszt’s musical depiction of the story exists also as an orchestral tone poem (a form which he invented). The version for piano, composed during the period 1861–65, is one of his most effective, and fiendishly difficult, virtuoso works.
Like the Petrarchan Sonnets that follow, the Liebesträume (‘Dreams of Love’) were originally composed as songs, which Liszt later transcribed for piano solo. Below are the texts, translated by Jane Mary Wilde.
Notturno No.1: Highest Love
You lie intoxicated in love’s arms, The fruits of life beckon you; Just a glance has fallen on me Yet I am rich above you all.
I gladly renounce earth’s happiness And gaze upwards, a martyr, For above me, in the golden distance, The heavens have opened.
Notturno No. 2: Blessed Death
I had perished From love’s bliss, I lay buried In her arms; I was awakened By her kisses, I saw Heaven In her eyes.
Notturno No. 3: O Love
O love, O love, so long as you can love, The hour will come, when you will stand at the grave and mourn.
And take care that your heart burns, and cherishes love and carries love, So long as yet another heart beats against yours in warmest love.
And he who grapples you to his heart, O do what you can for him in love,
And guard well your tongue: a hard word escapes too soon.
O God – it was not badly meant –But the other goes and weeps.
Composed over the period 1839–1846, Liszt’s three Petrarch Sonnets come from his second ‘Italian’ book of Années de pèlerinage (‘Years of Pilgrimage’), a collection of highly expressive as well as virtuoso pieces, many of which are effectively tone poems for piano. In borrowing the collection’s title from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796), Liszt aligns himself with Romantic literary movements of his age, underlining the connection further not only by drawing on Dante, as well as Petrarch, but also by providing extensive quotations from poetry and prose. Like the three Liebesträume the Petrarchan Sonnets are Liszt’s transcriptions of his own songs of the same titles, the text of which David Wilde has freely translated, as follows:
Sonetto 47
Blessed be the day and month and year
And time and hour, and the beautiful country,
The places, where that look first found me
That holds me bound unchangingly.
Blessed be the first love,
The first sweet pain, that I knew, The arrow and bow in the hand of the god, The wound, fast in my heart for ever.
Blessed be every vocal sound,
With which my mouth sets forth the name of my lady,
The sighs, the tears, the longing;
Blessed be the leaves, that, strewed, Her fame and my thoughts together bring, The only one, the one who bewitches me.
Sonetto 104
I find no peace, nor yet cause for war; I fear and hope, glow with warmth though freezing, I want to fly to heaven but must lay on the ground, I hold nothing, and yet embrace the world.
I am imprisoned and half released, Not trapped, yet by bonds confined, And love lets me neither die, nor fly; Will not have me live, nor leap out of the snare.
Seeing, I am blind, dumb yet I speak, Desiring my ruin, I cry for help in need, Hating myself, I love the other inwardly.
Feasting on my pain, I laugh while weeping, Mistrust equally life and death: That is my state, my mistress, Ah! because of you.
Sonetto 123
I already saw here below an Angel, Beautiful, with nothing on earth to be compared; So that joy and sorrow crept up on me alternately, I think of it, and life seems like a dream. And I saw each of these two lights weeping, The sun turn pale with envy; And sighing I felt words failing me, The streams were asked to stop, the stones flew.
Seriousness, love, longing, worth, deep sorrow, Weeping so tender that it changed to words, Even the breeze in the linden tree sounded rougher;
Heaven, breathless, listened to the sounds, No leaf stirred on the twig in the soft shower, As the sweet breath now gently faded.
The seventh piece in Liszt’s collection Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses (184555), ‘Funérailles’, bears the subtitle ‘October 1849’, a month in which two events affected the composer deeply: the execution of thirteen Hungarian generals by the Habsburgs after the failed Revolution led by Lajos Kossuth in Liszt’s homeland, and the death of Chopin. Thus, in one of his greatest works for the piano, Liszt commemorated three of his friends who died in the crushing of the Revolution, and his much admired associate. Indeed, the left hand octaves in the middle section of ‘Funérailles’ are reminiscent of the second episode of Chopin’s Polonaise in A Flat, Op 53, ‘The Heroic’.
David Wilde’s poem follows the structure of Liszt’s work as closely as possible.
Tribute of bells, Tolling
Doom deep and deeper still; Mourners wail in their mounting grief.
Tribute of trumpets
Greets a
March, slow swelling until, Rising in passion, expressive and heavy
[Tribute of treading feet], its Harmony falters, fails the will, Lamentations and moaning in sorrowful threnody, Tribute of tears.
Soft spring of Weeping wells up from a rill
To a River, a flood of desperate anger; then –
Tribute of defiance, Cavalry, bugles, clashing of arms, Promise of vindication to come; Declaims the march, hammered out now …
Tribute of remembrance –Vigour dissolves, all is done; Misty, ethereal.
Remembered hope, Remembered friends, Remembered tears, Pageant funereal.
Tribute of despair: Funérailles.
© 2013 David Wilde
Funérailles © 1970 David Wilde
Pianist and composer David Wilde was born in Manchester in 1935. A busy wartime career as ‘boy pianist’ brought him to the attention of the legendary pianist Solomon, who arranged for Wilde to study with his pupil and assistant Franz Reizenstein. Later, from 1949, Wilde studied composition with Professor Richard Hall at the Royal Manchester College of Music (precursor of the Royal Northern College of Music), of which he was elected a Fellow in 1953. In the same year he was awarded the prestigious Walter Dayas Gold Medal.
In 1961 Wilde won a first prize at the LisztBartók competition in Budapest. The legendary Nadia Boulanger was a jury member, and invited him to visit her in Paris at any suitable time, so when in the same year Wilde was awarded a senior scholarship by the Caird Foundation of Dundee he wrote to accept her invitation and ask if he might work with her. Wilde joined her in Paris and at the Conservatoire Americain in Fontainebleau (of which Boulanger was then Musical Director) in 1963, and again in 1964 and 1968, remaining in close touch with ‘Mademoiselle’ for the rest of her long life. Wilde is a passionate teacher, and his pupils include Jack Gibbons, now pursuing a brilliant career in the USA; Christopher Oakden, now Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover; Thomas Hell, winner of the European Competition for contemporary Music in Orleans, and Bulgarian pianist Irina Georgieva. Wilde taught at the Hochschule
für Musik und Theater in Hannover from 1981 to 2000, and was made a Professor Emeritus of the State of Lower Saxony in 1983. He has given many lectures in both English and German, including his paper on psychology and the meaning of music, ‘Listening to the Shadows’. His Jungian analysis of Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor, which he read and illustrated at London’s Analytical Psychology Club (of which he and his wife are elected life members), was originally written as a contribution to the book Analectia Lisztiana, ed. Michael Saffle (publ. Virginia Tech, USA).
During the 1990s, having travelled to besieged Sarajevo to support his heroic colleagues there, Wilde composed several works protesting against human rights abuses in our time, notably The Cellist of Sarajevo (1992), the Suite for Violin and Piano, Cry ‘Bosnia Herzegovina’, the String Quartet (of which the last movement is a ‘Threnody for the Unknown Victim of War and Oppression’), and the opera London under Siege, after an idea by Bosnian poet Goran Simic. The Cellist of Sarajevo, dedicated to Vedran Smailovic, is played the world over and was recorded by Yo-Yo Ma for Sony Classical, and the opera London under Siege was produced by the State Theatre of Lower Saxony in 1998. Wilde was twice honoured by the Bosnians: in 2003 he was awarded a diploma by the International Peace Committee of Sarajevo ‘for
services to human rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina and throughout Europe’, and in 2005 he was presented with the ‘Symbol of the Open Door’, representing honorary Bosnian Citizenship.
David Wilde has given many concert tours of the UK and played frequently with all the major London orchestras, all the BBC orchestras, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Scottish National and Hallé Orchestras.
He has appeared regularly at the Henry Wood Proms with conductors such as Horenstein, Boulez and Downes, and has toured New Zealand and played and taught in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, India, Russia, the USA, most countries of Western Europe and, of course, Hungary. His recordings include all of Beethoven’s Sonatas for violin and piano and the Sonata by Reizenstein with violinist Erich Gruenberg, Alan Bush’s Variations, Nocturne and Finale on an English Sea Song (in a version for piano and orchestra which Wilde had premiered at the Cheltenham Festival), and concertos by Thomas Wilson (especially composed for Wilde) and Sir Lennox Berkeley. In his recently published diaries Berkeley, who was present at the recording of his concerto, wrote simply: ‘David Wilde was first class.’
More recently, Wilde commissioned a sonata from Gabriel Jackson with funds from the Scottish Arts Council, the Britten-Pears Trust and the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, and
premiered it at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh in 2007. He gave the European premiere of this work during a recital in Braunschweig, Germany in October 2008. Also in 2007 EMI reissued Wilde’s 1968 HMV Liszt recital, coupled with Liszt recordings by Earl Wild.
Wilde now records exclusively for Delphian Records: in addition to the present repertoire, a Chopin recital (DCD34010), the complete piano works of Luigi Dallapiccola (DCD34020), a highly acclaimed Liszt Sonata coupled with the seven Elegies of Busoni (DCD34030), a Schumann recital (DCD34050), a Brahms recital (DCD34040) and a Beethoven recital (DCD34090) are available.
David Wilde has two children by his first marriage and now lives in Bathgate, near Edinburgh, with his second wife, writer and historian Jane Mary Wilde.
Also available on Delphian
Wilde plays Beethoven
David Wilde piano DCD34090
Three sonatas outlining a progression from the despair of No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2 – written at the same time as the start of the famous ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’, when Beethoven’s realisation that his deafness was complete and permanent led him to contemplate suicide – via his courageous fightback, brilliantly expressed in the irrepressible optimism of the ‘Waldstein’, Op. 53, towards the lofty spiritual aspirations of No. 31 in A flat, Op. 110.
‘Wilde brings maturity to his treatment of the D minor sonata: the melancholy fatalism of the Adagio is alleviated by his thoughtful touch. And there’s a brilliant momentum to the opening Allegro of [the “Waldstein”], before the almost completely static Adagio molto hangs like a sea-mist through which the concluding Rondo is approached. Superb’
– The Independent, March 2011, *****
Wilde plays Chopin at the Wigmore Hall
David Wilde piano
DCD34010
Pianist David Wilde brings astounding vibrancy and exuberance to the Polish master in this account of late Chopin. Wilde, for whom ‘every performance is a confrontation with himself’, counts among his mentors Solomon, Reizenstein, Elinson and Boulanger. In this bold live recital, he presents repertoire that conflicts with the feminine, gentle aspect of popular Chopin myth. He argues instead that Chopin’s wide-ranging music ‘includes an element of physical passion and a feeling for the heroic and for dramatic tension no less arresting than that of Liszt’.
‘the irrepressibly pianistic David Wilde projects a dozen Chopin tracks, including a majestically structured account of the B minor Sonata Op. 58 … and an exceptionally thoughtful performance of the Berceuse’ – Musical Opinion, November/December 2005
Also available on Delphian
Liszt: Sonata in B minor / Busoni: Elegies
David Wilde piano
DCD34030
‘one of the most intense and involving performances of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor that I have heard. The timing for the whole work is very slow … yet the fast passages are taken at a breakneck speed, with an extraordinary sense of cumulative momentum leading to the most emblazoned climaxes in which a ravishing cantabile tone rings out like bells even during the densest of chordal passages. The slower passages are weighty and profound, pursuing a single thread towards an apotheosis which leaves one emotionally drained’
– International Record Review, October 2007
Wilde plays Brahms
David Wilde piano
DCD34040
Bryce Morrison writes: David Wilde’s power and individuality make a separation between composer and performer, between creator and recreator unrealistic. He sees the simple grace and lyricism favoured by many pianists as an evasion of a deeper poetic truth, and if he gives us all of Brahms’s exulting strength in the fugue from the ‘Handel’ Variations, he is no less responsive to darker nights of the soul in the Three Intermezzi, Op. 117. Always there is an open invitation to reappraise Brahms’s genius, not by a radical re-interpretation (the determinedly ‘different’ way of, say, Gould or Pogorelich) but by a probing look beneath the music’s surface life.
‘The most impressive aspect … is the beautiful sound Wilde coaxes from his superbly voiced Steinway, with its pliant treble and richly resonant bass’ – Gramophone, July 2009
Wilde plays Schumann
David Wilde piano
DCD34050
Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 (with elements of the original first movement restored)
Kinderszenen, Op. 15
Carnaval, Op. 9
A veteran of the Romantic piano tradition, David Wilde brings six decades of intense experience to this recital. His playing harks back to a time when audiences expected much more from the performer. This is Schumann with personality – listeners searching for a ‘safe’ experience will be disappointed! ‘performances of mature insight, spiced with caprice and an iconoclastic spirit’
– MusicWeb International, February 2010
Dallapiccola: a portrait
David Wilde piano, Susan Hamilton soprano, Nicola Stonehouse mezzo-soprano, Robert Irvine cello
DCD34020
Luigi Dallapiccola is one of the most celebrated Italian composers of the twentieth century. This disc features chamber music and songs alongside his complete works for solo piano. Whether drawing on the music of the past to nourish the contrapuntal organisation of his own, or concentrating on the opportunities for gentle lyricism afforded by bell-like vocal and instrumental sonorities, Dallapiccola’s commitment to traditional expressive nuance has been seen by critics as a powerful aspect of his Italian insistence upon cantabilità – songfulness.
‘a marriage of discipline and imagination of which Wilde is fully aware … [Nicola Stonehouse] is eloquence itself in the Goethe-Lieder’
– Gramophone, April 2007