Etudes d’exécution transcendante

Preludio in C major

Molto vivace in A minor

Paysage in F major

Mazeppa in D minor

Feux-follets in B flat major

Vision in G minor

Eroica in E flat major

Wilde Jagd in C minor

Ricordanza in A flat major

Allegro agitato in F minor

Harmonies du soir in D flat major

Chasse-neige in B flat minor

An extraordinary thing about the Etudes d’exécution transcendante that Liszt completed in 1851 is that, extravagantly difficult though they seem to be, they are actually a simplification of the Grandes Etudes published twelve years earlier. An even more extraordinary thing is that the Grandes Etudes are themselves a fantastically transformed version of twelve comparatively simple Etudes written in the manner of a Cramer or a Czerny when Liszt was no more than fifteen years old. How he developed pieces like, say, Mazeppa and Feux -follets out of the conventional figuration of the corresponding numbers of the early Etudes, which betray not a hint of a wild horse or a will-o’-the-wisp between them, it is impossible to imagine.

Bearing in mind the history of these Transcendental Studies, it seems likely that some, though clearly not all, of the individual titles - which appear only in the 1851 version - are intended as guides to the interpretation of the pieces that carry them rather than as an indications of their sources of inspiration. The Preludio title attached to the first study in the set is fairly obvious, it is true, but it is also a confirmation that it is no more than an introductory flourish, a virtuoso improvisation leading to nowhere except the next piece. While the Molto Vivace study in A minor has no descriptive title, its diabolic post-Paganini character is clear enough from its clattering seconds, the violent extremes of its colouring, its sustained restlessness and its bizarre ending. With the third study in F major, having cut a Presto agitato section present in the earlier version, Liszt clearly wished to secure the preservation of its sunlit and relaxed if not always tranquil atmosphere by calling it Paysage (“Landscape”).

Mazeppa, however, is different. We know from the fact that Liszt extended and orchestrated this study to convert it into the symphonic poem of the same name that the music was indeed associated in the composer’s mind with the heroic adventures of the hero of Byron’s poem. Indeed, he dedicated an earlier version of the piano study, written shortly after the Grandes Etudes, to Victor Hugo, who had treated the same subject in his Les Orientales. The present version ends with a D major coda to which Liszt appends Hugo’s words “Il tombe enfin…et se relève Roi!” (He falls at last…and rises as a King!). Basically, although there are ample suggestions of Mazeppa’s experience of being carried across the steppes of the Ukraine tied to the back of a wild horse, the study is a highly coloured series of variations on the heroic theme introduced just after the introductory cadenza. Of the original teenage Etude in D minor nothing remains except the urgent figures in parallel thirds regularly introduced between the two hands.

Feux-follets derives its fluttering will-o’-the-wisp motion from the alternating major and minor seconds of the melodic line, its elusive personality from harmonies shifting between the eerie and the innocent, its effects of changing light from the variety of articulation applied to its fragmentary, fleeting material. The 1825 Etude in B flat major contributes no more than a suggestion of a theme in dotted rhythm. Even if Vision is not associated, as Busoni claims, with “the funeral of the first Napoleon advancing with solemn and imperial pomp,” it is certainly an emphatic contrast to its predecessor. It begins in G minor in the bottom half of the keyboard with colours as sombre as the piano can provide. There is, however, an early change to D major and the climax of the piece is a G major triumph (marked “with exultation” in the 1837 version),which seems to cast more than a little doubt on the Busoni interpretation. The G major ending confirms the changed situation.

Although Liszt must have had Beethoven in mind when he applied the Eroica title to the seventh study in E flat major, it has nothing in common with the Eroica Symphony. It is a full-scale glorification of the march theme introduced in radiant octaves after an introduction borrowed from the early Impromptu on themes of Rossini and Spontini, which is no less incongruously echoed at the end. Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt), on the other hand, is a complete tone poem. Driven at first by a demonic galloping rhythm in C minor, it sets against that sinister influence a fresher, knightly theme in C major and then, though without much relaxing the impetus, a passionately romantic episode in E flat major. The obviously victorious C major recapitulation surely suggests that, in spite of the violent coda, evil does not prevail.

Unlike most of the Transcendental Studies, Ricordanza and the otherwise untitled Allegro agitato are both clearly anticipated in the corresponding Etudes of 1825 - which is useful evidence for the defence against the common assertion that these pieces are derived from examples by Chopin, who had published only his Rondo, Op.1, by that time. Perhaps the nocturnal Ricordanza (Remembrance) should be defended too from Busoni’s well meant but somewhat unattractive assertion that it resembles “a bundle of faded love letters.” There is nothing in the least faded about Ricordanza, which is certainly less aggressive than its companions but which, in its unique blend of exquisite sentiment and subtle irony, covers a range of colour unexplored in the rest of the collection. The Allegro agitato in F minor does indeed resemble Chopin’s Study in the same key but, even it were influenced by that work, the demonic driving force behind it - the most cogently argued and most economically constructed of all the Studies - is characteristic only of Liszt.

In the last pair of Transcendental Studies Liszt lit upon two ideas that were to be particularly appealing to the impressionist generation some decades later. Harmonies du Soir (Evening harmonies) anticipates Debussy not only in its Baudelairean title but also in its actual sound, not least in the frequent suggestion of evening bells. It is true that trionfante, the direction applied by Liszt to the heroic middle section of the piece, is a term quite foreign to Debussy. On the other hand, the nocturnal framework in which these stirring events are set, particularly the atmospheric pedal-sustained harmonies and chiaroscuro colouring at the beginning, has a poetry not very far from his.

If the impressionist composers found less inspiration in snow than their painter colleagues it is not because there was no musical precedent. Carrying a fragmented melodic line through a sustained flurry of rapidly articulated broken chords in the middle and upper parts of the keyboard, Chasse-Neige (Snow Storm) develops from a gentle snow fall- by way of a crescendo, a rising tempo and increasingly prolonged chromatic gusts of wind - to a blizzard that eases off only in the final bars.