Liszt

The Ultimate in Virtuosity

The revelation that created the golden age of the piano virtuoso came from neither a pianist nor even a great composer. The decisive moment when Niccolò Paganini, a mediocre composer but a miraculously accomplished violinist, inspired a revolution in piano technique was when Franz Liszt first heard him play – an occasion traditionally associated with the violinist’s first appearance in Paris on 9th March 1831. Since Liszt was apparently not there on that day, it is probably more accurately ascribed to just over a year later when Paganini gave a concert in aid of the victims of the cholera epidemic raging in Paris at the time. Liszt was certainly present at the latter event and was electrified by the the experience: “What a man! What a violin!” Setting out to make himself the Paganini of the piano, he practised every day “four to five hours of exercises (thirds, sixths, octaves, tremolos, repetition of notes, cadenzas etc). Ah! provided I don’t go mad,” he went on in a letter to one of his colleagues, “you will find in me an artist… an artist such as is required today.”

Liszt’s immediate creative reaction to Paganini was the all-but unplayable Clochette Fantasy, based on the old Italian melody “La Campanella” which Paganini had used in the finale of his Violin Concerto in B minor. Later, however, Liszt concentrated his attention mainly on the 24 Caprices for solo violin, the only violin work Paganini had consented to publish. It was there that he was able to study Paganini’s technical innovations – in bowing, left-hand pizzicato, harmonics, fingering, performing on the G-string only – and work out piano equivalents to these violinistic effects for the Etudes d’exécution transcendantes d’après Paganini of 1838. It took him a further 13 years, while he developed piano virtuosity in a prodigious variety of other directions, to assimilate the Paganini influence in a pianistically realistic way. But when he simplified the Etudes d’exécution transcendantes in the Grandes Etudes de Paganini he finally succeeded. In so thoroughly transforming the technique of his instrument he achieved what Schumann called “the ultimate in virtuosity”.

None of the other composer-pianists who were thrilled by Paganini found such comprehensive pianistic inspiration in his playing, even though it was a significant factor in the formation of the keyboard styles of some of them, like Chopin and Schumann. It is possible that Schumann could himself have achieved “the ultimate in virtuosity” had he not, in an attempt to improve his dexterity by mechanical means, injured his right hand shortly after he heard Paganini in Frankfurt in 1830. But if that is what made him the composer he was, beginning with Papillons in 1831, we cannot entirely regret his accident.

After Liszt only one composer could claim to have originated a similarly transformative piano technique. And for that musical history had to wait until half way through the last century when Karlheinz Stockhausen started on his no less transcendental series of Klavierstücke (Piano Pieces). While they are inspired by a new concept of sound, they remain true piano music, at least until the composer turned to from the piano to the synthesiser in Klavierstück No.15. They do not – like Helmut Lachenmann’s Guero which entirely avoids sounds produced by striking the keys – deny the instrument’s existence. It might mean playing the same chord 139 times, or applying the flat of the hands or forearms to the keyboard while at the same time acquiring the most sophisticated refinements in touch and pedal effects, not to mention general musicianship.

In the meantime, between Liszt and Stockhausen, there have been generations of composer- pianists who have achieved what one might call a marginal virtuosity, adapting conventional piano technique to make it compatible with material alien to it. One of the most impressive in this respect is Isaac Albéniz who in the last decade of his life spent eight years working out how to accommodate on the piano not only the melodies, harmonies and rhythms of Andalusian folk music but also its texture and its characteristic sounds, the guitar figuration, the vocalisations, the heel taps and hand claps. He had been inspired by Spanish music throughout his career but the technique he devised specifically for his late masterpiece Ibéria was a clear departure from what he had done before. Similarly, Bela Bartók had to reject the influence of his great Hungarian compatriot to translate into piano terms the true Hungarian folk song of which Liszt was scarcely aware but which Bartók himself had so diligently researched and so lovingly absorbed into his own idiom.

Of those who were seduced by musical exoticism, Mily Balakirev produced perhaps its most celebrated reflection in virtuoso piano terms in his “oriental fantasy” Islamey. As for the impressionists, while Ravel was far from being a virtuoso and Debussy was not much given to bravura display for its own sake, they created between them – not without disputing who was the first to discover the latest idea – a new piano sound with unlimited poetic potential.

Nearly every development in 20th century music has had its virtuoso composer-pianist exponent. A minimalist virtuoso is surely a contradiction in terms, but when it comes to the marriage of jazz with the classical repertoire there are dozens of them. A favourite example is Nikolay Kapustin, the unlikely Ukranian whose appeal rests not only in his securely poised stylistic balance but also his extraordinary, sometimes even manic energy. His music is nowhere near as complex or as mechanically driven as that of Conlon Nancarrow – Kapustin doesn’t have recourse to the player-piano – but Nancarrow comes to mind as a comparison, not least perhaps because of a mutual admiration for Art Tatum. And one of the most exciting composer-pianists of the day, who has represented a variety of modern styles, is Frederic Rzewski whose astonishing hour-long The People United will never be Defeated is a classic of its kind.

The composer-pianist at the front of the avant-garde has become increasingly rare however. Stockhausen, unlike most of those featured in this short survey, did not perform his own piano music, resourceful though he was in his choice of dedicatees. But there are still a few musicians like Marc-André Hamelin who is both a composer – his Etudes in All the Minor Keys include a particularly fascinating After Paganini-Liszt – and a pianist apparently capable of meeting the most extreme technical demands. So there is still reason to hope that the implications of the most pianistic of the Klavierstücke will not go unrealised.

Gerald Larner © 2011