Grosses Konzertsolo S176 (1849-50)

The Grosses Konzertsolo is one of the least often performed and yet one of the most fascinating of all Liszt’s longer piano pieces. It is far from perfectly formed but - in the light of the full-scale realisation of its structural implications in the Sonata in B minor - it reveals much about the development of the composer’s thinking in his late thirties and early forties. Not a very ambitious project to start with, it was intended as a competition piece for the Paris Conservatoire and, though extremely demanding in keyboard terms, was shorter and less interestingly shaped than the present work. Before he published the piece, however - dedicating it to his piano virtuoso colleague Adolf Henselt, who found he couldn’t play it - Liszt inserted into a basically sonata-form Allegro an extended Andante sostenuto middle section, which considerably increased its stature. It was from that half-formed concept that, two or three years later, Liszt developed the masterly four-movements-in-one structure of the Sonata in B minor.

Anticipations of the Sonata in B minor in the rhetorical introduction to the Grosses Konzertsolo suggest that, consciously or not, the two works were closely associated in Liszt’s mind. Although the main theme of the opening Allegro is clearly the thematic source of the second subject, which makes an early entry after a short recitative, the latter inspiration is quite different in character. Even so, its inward expression and intimate scoring do not long survive the grandiloquent tendency that characterises the work as a whole and which shows itself here in a heavily chordal treatment of its once lyrical melody. The Andante sostenuto material retains its poetry for rather longer, not least when overlaid by a ecstatically chromatic counterpoint high in the right hand. It too undergoes the heroic treatment, over a characteristically rumbling left hand, and it also finds itself involved in frenziedly urgent events before it emerges in proud major harmonies under the radiance of Tannhäuser-style decoration.

After further development of the two main themes of the Allegro section, and of a scherzando idea that had been introduced alongside them, the recapitulation is devoted largely to the lyrical second subject. It is recalled in a variety of manfestations, from unpretentious simplicity to a climactic assertion of heroism where it is combined not only with glittering tremolandos in the right hand but also with trumpet-call echoes of the Andante sostenuto. The extravagant ending is in keeping with the stylistic tendency of the work in general.