Liszt’s work for cello and piano: A quest for spirituality Liszt’s original works for cello and piano belong to his final period and are the product of his old age and his quest for spirituality. A kind of resignation is inherent in them, a grey chill and sorrow. Without sentimentality, they tend to express the loss of emotional completeness. With the radical disregard for musical conventions that is characteristic of his late work, and far from the virtuoso brilliance of his previous and most popular works, they are composed in free and open forms, expressing a very modern degree of instability. The harmonic language often leads to very daring solutions that will be followed and developed in the following century. Intense and romantic melodies fade into silence as life ends in death; the pieces (as the ‘dark’ titles often suggest) are in fact reflecting the composer’s private abyss, where desolation and the afterlife became an obsession. The first Elegy, described in the words of the composer as ‘more for dreaming than for playing’, was composed in memory of Madame Moukhanoff Kalergis, a close friend and patroness of both Wagner and Liszt. The original title of the piece was Schlummerlied im Grabe (Lullaby in the Grave), but the first edition shows the title Elégie. The piano version came first, shortly followed by the version for cello, piano, harp and harmonium which was performed at a concert in memory of the dedicatee on 22 May 1875. A version for violin and piano and one for piano duet were also prepared making a total of five different versions. The second Elégie was issued in 1877 with a German title, and dedicated to Lina Ramann in gratitude for an article she wrote about the first one. The Romance oubliée has its origins in a song which Liszt composed as early as 1843: ‘O pourquoi donc’. Liszt himself made a piano transcription of the piece in 1848 under title of Romance, and published much later as ‘Forgotten Romance’, in 1881, by publisher Arnold Simon. The coda of the work is reminiscent of the figuration in the solo part at the end of the slow movement of Berlioz’s Harold en Italie. 2
3
Without question, La lugubre gondola is the most significant work in this collection. Its genesis is well documented in letters from which we know that Liszt was Wagner’s guest in the Palazzo Vendramin in Venice in late 1882. Liszt himself said that he had written the piece ‘as if under a premonition six weeks before Wagner’s death’. In fact, the first version of the work – a piano piece in 6/8 – was written in December 1882. His premonition was fulfilled in March the following year, when Wagner’s long funeral procession to Bayreuth began with a funeral gondola to the railway station in Venice. The piece alternates a returning melodic subject/theme, characterized by the use of ‘painful’ appoggiaturas and chromatic intervals, the floating equilibrium of the middle section, almost a musical description of the waves of the Venetian lagoon and ends in a dark and futuristic coda of 17 bars where the musical language is reduced to empty intervals and parallel, motionless chords. The cello and piano version was written in 1885 following the second version of the piano piece of the same year, but not published until 1974. Like the Romance oubliée, Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth is also a transcription of one of Liszt’s songs. He was particularly fond of it and in fact there are four versions for solo piano, as well as several song versions, including the substitution of a different text to the melody, and a version for piano duet. The poem’s setting is Nonnenwerth, an island in the Rhine, and the site of a famous Benedictine abbey where Liszt sojourned with Marie d’Agoult and their children between 1841 and 1843. After the separation with the Countess, Liszt’s contact with his children became sporadic, so there may be some element of nostalgia in Liszt’s frequently returning to this work. The six Consolations, completed during 1849–50, have always been among Liszt’s most popular piano works, especially since there’s a relative absence of transcendental technical requirements. The title is from an anthology of poems by Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve which appeared in 1830, although the six miniatures have no explicit reference to the texts. The cello and piano version was realized by Jules De Swert (1843-1891) a renowned Belgian cellist, teacher and composer whom Wagner chose as principal cellist in the Bayreuth orchestra. Liszt’s appreciation was profound and he 4
wrote to De Swert that he even preferred his transcription to the original. To demonstrate his gratitude he specially composed a bridge passage to link the first and fourth in the set. Another very popular work, representing the Liszt of the salon, though no less sensitive for this, is the Liebestraum No.3, arranged for cello and piano by American cellist Mark Skalmer and published in 1912. Angelus! is the first piece of the third volume of the Années de pèlerinage and dates from 1867–77. With the subtitle ‘Prayer to the Guardian Angels’, it is an evocation of Angelus bells which Liszt heard ringing quietly in the evening in Rome, where he was living at the time. It is a piece that Liszt transcribed for string quartet (or string quintet with optional double bass) and it is presented here in a fine transcription by Lothar Windsperger (1885–1935). It shares the special atmospheres and textures of the original pieces (included in this recording) in its special balance between silence and sound, between romantic, rhetorical gestures and visionary, and often astonishingly modern, inventions. C Emanuele Torquati, 2011 Emanuele Torquati (a ‘vibrant pianist’ according to the Boston Globe), enjoys a diverse and varied career. He studied with Giancarlo Cardini and Konstantin Bogino. Other influential figures included Alexander Lonquich, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Ian Pace and Nicolas Hodges. He has performed and been broadcast across Europe and North America. He was invited as artist in residence by The Banff Centre to curate projects on Messiaen and Janácek. His activity has been supported by Institutions such as CEMAT, Accademia Chigiana, DAAD, UfMuDK Graz, IEMA Frankfurt and NEC Boston. He has given several world premiere performances, working closely with Sylvano Bussotti, Wolfgang Rihm, Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg, Jonathan Harvey and Brett Dean. Other collaborations have included work with Matthias Pintscher, Beat Furrer, Michael Gielen and Isabel Charisius. Torquati is artistic director of music@villaromana for German institution Villa Romana. www.emanueletorquati.com 5
Francesco Dillon studied cello with Andrea Nannoni in Firenze; he was also taught by David Geringas, Mario Brunello and Amadeo Baldovino, as well as (for composition) Salvatore Sciarrino. Recent concerts have included a debut at the Munich Biennale with ORF Wien, the Orchestra Nazionale della RAI and the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana. He is cellist of the Quartetto Prometeo. His interest in new music led him to collaborate closely with today’s most important composers, such as Gavin Bryars, Philip Glass, Vinko Globokar, Sofia Gubaidulina, Jonathan Harvey, Toshio Hosokawa, Giya Kancheli, Alexander Knaifel, Bernhard Lang, David Lang, Arvo Pärt, Henri Pousseur, Steve Reich, Fausto Romitelli, Kaija Saariaho, Salvatore Sciarrino, John Zorn and Alvin Lucier. As a member of the group AlterEgo and as a soloist, he plays at major contemporary music festivals. Among his chamber-music partners are Irvine Arditti, Giuseppe Carmignola, Pietro Farulli, Veronika Hagen, Alexander Lonquich, Ian Pace, R. Schmidt and Stefano Scodanibbio. With the Quartetto Prometeo he won a first prize at the festivals of the Prague Spring (1998), ARD Munich and Bordeaux. He has broadcasted widely and made recordings for Aulos, Dynamic, Kairos, Ricordi, Stradivarius, Die Schachtel and Touch. His most recent releases are the first recordings of Variazioni for cello and orchestra by Sciarrino (which won a ‘Diapason d’or’) and the recently discovered Ballata by Giacinto Scelsi with the RAI Orchestra. Dillon is artistic director of music@villaromana for German institution Villa Romana. www.francescodillon.com
Recorded 10–11 January 2011, Teatro Comunale Filippo Marchetti, Camerino Sound engineer: Gianluca Gentili Artist photos: C Pierangelo Laterza 2010 Thanks to: Michael Barbour, Gianluca, Angela, Paola e Natale. Special thanks for the hospitality in Camerino to Francesco Rosati, president of the Camerino branch of the Gioventù Musicale d’Italia (GMI), to the Comune di Camerino, to Mr. Zucconi Galli Fonseca, for the beautiful Steinway piano donated to the GMI P & C 2011 Brilliant Classics
6
7