Piano Sonata (Liszt)

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One of the pages from the original manuscript of the sonata.

Franz Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor (Klaviersonate h-moll), dedicated to Robert Schumann, is widely considered to be his greatest work for the instrument, and one of the seminal works of the Romantic piano literature.

The Sonata was composed in 1852-1853, and first performed on January 27, 1857, in Berlin by Liszt's pupil and son-in-law, Hans von Bülow. Although it was attacked by conservative critics such as Eduard Hanslick, and even disparaged by the pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein, the sonata drew an enthusiastic compliment from Richard Wagner. Humphrey Searle, Franz Liszt, SONATE h-MOLL, Performed by Daniel Barenboim, Deutsche Grammophon, Catalog #2531-271. Record sleeve notes. The newspaper Nationalzeitung referred to it as "eine Herausforderung zurn Zischen und Pochen" (an invitation to hissing and stomping). Liszt lamented:

...up to now, all the best-known French pianists, except Saint-Saens, have shrunk from playing anything of mine except transcriptions, since my original compositions are considered ridiculous and intolerable.

The sonata is notable for being constructed from a small number of motivic elements that are woven into an enormous musical architecture. The motivic units are continuously transformed throughout the work to suit the current musical context. A theme that in one context sounds menacing and even violent, is then transformed into a hauntingly beautiful melody. This technique helps to bind the sonata's sprawling structure into a single cohesive unit, although the architectural powers of the musician need to be highly developed to achieve this in performance.

Broadly speaking, the Sonata has four movements although there is no gap between them, although many recordings of the work will split it up into several – with some recordings even splitting it into as many as thirteen – movements. Superimposed upon the four movements is a large sonata form structure, although the precise beginning and endings of the traditional development and recapitulation sections has long been a topic of debate. Most analysts agree that the development begins roughly with the slow movement and the recapitulation with the scherzo fugue. In using this structure, Liszt was obviously influenced by Franz Schubert's Wanderer Fantasie, a work he greatly admired, performed often and arranged for piano and orchestra. Schubert used the same limited number of musical elements to create a broad four movement work, and used a fugal 4th movement.

The Sonata has had many champions over the years, and has been performed by virtually every major 20th century pianist. Pianists as diverse as Alfred Brendel and Vladimir Horowitz have performed it, and it seems to be one of the few works that appear in every repertoire. This may be because the sonata's considerable technical and interpretative challenges place it as one of the most difficult and rewarding works a pianist can undertake.

The quiet ending of the sonata may have been an afterthought; the manuscript, the only copy of which is available in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, contains a crossed-out ending section which would have ended the work in a loud flourish instead. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989, page 156. This is in the middle of an extensive analysis of the sonata, pp. 149–157.)

References

External links

[The Piano Society] – free recording of Liszt's Piano Sonata

[Public Domain Sheet Music of the Piano Sonata (IMSLP)]

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