Programme — Mignons Lied (“Kennst du das Land?”) S274 (1842-1854), Der du vom Himmel bist S279 (1842), Die drei Zigeuner S320 (1860)

Der Fischerknabe S292 No.1 (1845-1859)

Im Rhein, im schönen Strome S272 (1840-1856)

Mignons Lied (“Kennst du das Land?”) S274 (1842-1854)

Der du vom Himmel bist S279 (1842)

Die drei Zigeuner S320 (1860)

Liszt’s favourite song composer was Schubert, by a long way: between 1838 and 1846 he wrote no fewer than 55 transcriptions of Schubert Lieder. And yet his own first songs to German texts, written throughout the 1840s, are extravagantly distant from the Schubert model. It was only towards the end of the 1850s, when he was thinking about issuing them in a collected edition, that he regretted his self-indulgence. “My earlier songs,” he wrote to a colleague, “are mostly inflatedly sentimental and frequently overladen in the accompaniment.”

In the light of that observation Liszt submitted just about all of his earlier songs to a thorough revision, or several revisions in a few cases, laying a musicological minefield but also perfecting some of the most beautiful of mid-nineteenth century Lieder. Der Fischerknabe, one of three settings of poems from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, is a particularly successful example. Although the piano part is still far more elaborate than anything Schubert might have written, the 1859 revised version cannot be described as a “piano concerto with vocal obbligato” as the 1845 original was. The pianist retains the impressionistic water symbolism in the rippling arpeggios in the left hand and the gently splashing harmonies in the right without putting the voice to any kind of disadvantage. The effect of the sudden stillness that reduces the piano to a single accompanying line before the seductive call “aus den Tiefen” is a just reward for the pianist-composer’s modesty.

Im Rhein, im schönen Strome is comparable in its second version to that of Der Fischerknabe. The piano loses the long postlude originally awarded to it but keeps its rippling figuration which, again to good effect, is momentarily stilled when it comes to the mighty Cologne cathedral. The incense-perfumed harmonies in the closing stanza evaporate as the river flows on.

The 1854 revision of Mignons Lied - which most singers prefer in spite of the faulty prosody and a linguistic misunderstanding that were to be corrected in a third (1860) version - retains the vivid tone-poem element when it comes to “es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut” in the last stanza. At the other extreme, it is both restrained and subtly suggestive in the uncertain, off-beat piano chords that accompany Mignon’s repeated question “Kennst du es wohl?” If the synthetic extension of Goethe’s text at the end is regrettable from the literary point of view, it does sustain an additional twenty bars of high-quality music.

The one Liszt song to be heard in its original version in this group is, interestingly enough, Der du vom Himmel bist, which has been criticised more than most for its extravagance. Certainly, Goethe’s little poem is an intimate inspiration which scarcely calls for histrionics. But it does refer to “Treiben” and “Schmerz” and the younger’s composer’s operatic reaction to those ideas does offset the return of the initial serenity even more effectively than the sober treatment of the same words in the more mature versions - which, however, avoid the passionate prolongation of the closing lines.

While he was fluent in French, competent in German and adequate in Italian, Liszt was almost as ignorant of Hungarian as he was of English. He took pride, on the other hand, in his Hungarian nationality and cherished a particular fondness for Hungarian gypsy music. If we didn’t know that from his writings it would be clear enough from his setting of Lenau’s Die drei Zigeuner, which is more authentic in style than any of his Hungarian Rhapsodies. The cimbalom imitations in the piano introduction and interludes, the fiddle csardas in the second stanza, the use of the gypsy scale and reverse-dotted rhythms confirm not only his familiarity with the idiom but also his affection for it and what he described as “the intoxication of its fascinating exaltation.”