Piano Concerto No.2 in A major

Both of Liszt’s piano concertos took an extraordinarily long time to complete. Between conception and first performance 25 years elapsed in the case of the First in E flat and 18 years in the case of the Second in A, and they were not ready for publication even then. All kinds of explanations have been given, such as the composer’s busy life as a travelling virtuoso and his inexperience in writing for orchestra - until, that is, he had the opportunity to learn the art at first hand as director of music at the Court of Weimar in the 1840s and 1850s. But the major problem, surely, was his ambition to rescue the concerto from the long-cherished three-movement convention and fundamentally reform it.

It wasn’t until he discovered Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasia - which, significantly, he arranged for piano and orchestra in 1851 - that he could clearly see his way to reshaping the concerto as a continuous piece based on one main theme and yet incorporating slow-movement, scherzo and finale elements within a single-movement construction. The solution having been worked out, the two concertos were first performed within two years of each other, the Second in A major by Liszt’s pupil Hans von Bronsart with the composer conducting in Weimar in 1857.

The main theme of the Piano Concerto in A major is the intimately expressive melody gently intoned by woodwind in the opening bars. While most of the variants heard at this introductory stage remain close to the original - an ethereal texture of strings and woodwind accompanied by piano arpeggios, a more emphatic assertion on piano, another lyrical expression on woodwind and strings - a liberated horn solo gives notice that not all the melodic material will be so clearly derived from that source. The aggressive theme of the dramatic episode that follows, proclaimed by the pianist’s heavily loaded right hand over an angrily rumbling left, is another distant relation. So too, introduced by the piano after a massively sonorous passage of double octaves and a short pause, is the rhythmically perverse theme of the Allegro agitato assai, a demonic scherzo of Mephistophelean wit and vigour.

The original shape of the opening theme of the work has not been forgotten, however, as the soloist indicates in a nostalgic memory of it at the very end of the scherzo. The tempo changes to Allegro moderato and, after a poetic transition to what amounts to a central slow movement, an eloquent solo cello introduces an easily recognisable but particularly melodious variant humbly accompanied by the soloist. A piano cadenza precedes another change of tempo, this time to Allegro deciso for a virtuoso development section which reviews most of the themes presented so far, sometimes two or three of them at once.

Giving some indication of what is to follow, but without reducing the shock when it actually happens, the Allegro deciso leads directly into the finale - the Marziale un poco meno allegro and its highly unlikely, heroically trumpeted treatment of the once intimate main theme. Happily (though in a passage marked with an optional cut) Liszt appoints the piano and woodwind to restore the theme to its essentially expressive character before launching into the mercurially brilliant coda.

Gerald Larner ©2004