Liszt and the Piano

9. Liszt and the piano.

During the 1830s and 40s Liszt made an unprecedented advance in piano technique, introducing
a range of new technical and expressive possibilities. This breakthrough, coupled with the related
evolution in the instrument itself, its greater strength, its bigger sound and wider dynamic range,
allowed a richer variety of pianistic textures. The instrument could encompass symphonic and
vocal works, and imitate a wealth of colouristic and timbral effects. Modern piano technique owes
much to Liszts pioneering developments during these years. Pianists still turn to his music for its
technical resources. When Busoni began to study the piano afresh at the age of 30, in order to
remedy what he considered to be defects in his own playing, Liszts music was his chief guide.
Out of the laws he found there Busoni rebuilt his technique. Gratitude and admiration, he wrote,
made Liszt at that time my master and my friend.
The works most representative of Liszts virtuoso years are the six Paganini Studies and the 12
Transcendental Studies. The sets were published with the titles Etudes dexcution
transcendante daprs Paganini and Grandes tudes respectively, before they were revised in
1851 with their final titles of Grandes tudes de Paganini and Etudes dexcution transcendante.
In their earlier versions these works remain among the most daunting challenges in the piano
literature, and they offer telling proof of Liszts pre-eminence among the pianists of his time.
The Paganini Studies, with the exception of La campanella, are based on the caprices for solo
violin, and each study concentrates on a particular technical or musical device, equivalent to
those in the original violin works:
1. G minor, tremolando (based on Paganinis Caprice no.6, with introduction and coda based on
Caprice no.5); 2. E major, scales and octaves (Caprice no.17); 3. G minor, leaps and rapid note
reiteration (La campanella); 4. E major, arpeggios and crossing hands (Caprice no.1); 5. E major,
echo effects and glissandos (Caprice no.9); 6. A minor, theme and variations (Caprice no.24)
The 12 Transcendental Studies are closely related to the Paganini Studies in style and
virtuosity. These pieces exist in three versions (Mazeppa has an additional version dating from
1840 as well as an orchestral version as a symphonic poem), since the 12 Grandes tudes are
elaborate reworkings (with the exception of no.7, later called Eroica) of the juvenile Etude
(1827). It was not until the final version that Liszt added the poetic titles. The tonal plan of these
12 studies follows that of the original 1826 set. Liszt unfolds a descending circle of 5ths, with
each alternate study in the relative minor of its predecessor. Since 24 studies were announced
for the 1838 publication, we infer that Liszt originally intended to continue the key scheme and
complete the circle. Robert Schumann reviewed this 1838 version for the Neue Zeitschrift fr
Musik, and aptly described them as Studies in storm and dread fit for ten or 12 players in the
world.

The 1851 revisions of both sets of studies were designed to allow the pieces to speak more
effectively. Liszt smoothed out some of the more intractable difficulties and clarified the textures,
giving the pieces a leaner, more brilliant sound. The revisions made these works more widely
accessible and accommodated the changing requirements of the modern piano, with its heavier
action. Nevertheless, even with the more complicated textures ironed out, these works make
enormous demands on the pianist.
A comparison between the later versions of each study and the corresponding juvenile model
reveals the immense strides that Liszt made as a pianist over 25 years (ex.4. The original 1826
(untitled) version of Wilde Jagd was unremarkable, influenced as it was by Cramer and Czerny.
Yet it contains the seeds of one of the most difficult concert studies ever written for the piano.
Liszts hands were long and narrow, and lack of webbing between the fingers allowed him to take
wide stretches with comparative ease. Because his fingertips were blunted rather than tapered,
they gave maximum traction across the surface of the keyboard. Another physical advantage for
Liszt was that his fourth fingers were unusually flexible, and this made it easier for him to play
shimmering textures with several things going on inside the same hand simultaneously. His
keyboard textures often assume that the player can stretch a 10th without difficulty (ex.5).
Liszts fingerings are of absorbing interest. They arise naturally from the keyboard and from the
anatomy of the human hand. The layout of the double-3rds scale in the Sixth Paganini Study
seems perverse, until we consider the alternatives. Liszt forms the hand into a two-pronged fork
(second and fourth fingers only), an unusual shape which permits him to move across the
keyboard at high velocity (ex.6).
Interlocking scales show Liszt at his inventive best. One of the basic models may be found in
the first volume of Technische Studien; it finds a home in such shining passages as found in La
campanella (ex.7). The challenge turns out to be mental rather than physical. Rather than
dividing his resources between two hands, each with five digits, Liszt in effect sees a single
interlocked hand of ten digits.
One of Liszts most sensational effects still bears his name: Liszt octaves. They are played with
alternating hands, thumbs overlapping, creating the illusion of regular double octaves at
unattainable speeds. Difficult as they sound, such passages are highly economical. The player
achieves double the power with half the output. A well-known example occurs in the Second
Paganini Study, in E major (ex.8).
The more dramatic devices in Liszts music required larger halls for their full effect. It was Liszt
who took the piano out of the salon and placed it in the modern concert hall. When, in early
1837, he gave a recital before 3000 people in Milan, at La Scala, he was democratizing the
instrument. Nevertheless, in order to achieve this end he had to overcome much prejudice.
There were many musicians whose thinking was rooted in the 18th century, and who regarded
the piano much as the harpsichord had been regarded before it as a chamber instrument to

be played before a small circle of connoisseurs. Chopin, Hummel and Moscheles had all made
their reputations in this way. When Chopin played in the salons of Paris before a select audience
drawn from high society, he gave his incomparable performances on the silvery toned Pleyel,
with its light action. Liszt had often played the Pleyel and found it wanting: he disparagingly
called it a pianino. The seven-octave Erard, with its heavier action and larger sound, was more
suited to his pianistic style. This was the instrument that he preferred during his tours of the
1830s and 40s. Even so, it could not always withstand the onslaught of his more powerful pieces,
and Liszt occasionally broke a string or snapped a hammer. Not until the firms of Steinway and
Bechstein produced their reinforced instruments in the 1850s did Liszts repertory of the 1840s
come into its own.
In Erards double-escapement action Liszt perceived some unexplored possibilities. His music
abounds in streams of rapid note reiterations which, when properly executed, delude the ear into
believing that the piano has been turned into a sustaining instrument. One of the finest examples
occurs in the Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli, a supplement to the Italian Annes de plerinage
(ex.9). Into a similar category falls the tremolando, a dangerous device in the wrong hands.
Some of his later compositions (Les jeux deaux la Villa dEste, for example, or his arrangement
of Isoldes Liebestod from Tristan) rely heavily on the effect and can be ruined in performance.
Liszt advised that the tremolando be played as rapidly as possible, with the keys already halfway
depressed and brought to life by the slightest trembling of the hand. A notorious example occurs
towards the end of the Dante Sonata (ex.10).
Leaps were a particular speciality. Liszt himself enjoyed taking risks and he sometimes asks the
pianist to perform some difficult feats. The first version of Au bord dune source (1840) contains
an invitation to disaster, which is generally declined in favour of the revision of 1855 (ex.11). The
glissando was another effect with which Liszt dazzled his audience. The Tenth Hungarian
Rhapsody, Les patineurs, and Totentanz all contain extended glissandos of an unprecedented
range and power (ex.12). In a letter to Olga von Meyendorff, incidentally, Liszt advised her to
use only the nail, either of your thumb or of your index or third finger, without even the tiniest
area of flesh (his italics; Waters and Tyler, C1979, p.390).
In the 1830s Liszt developed some unconventional marks of expression. The impulse to do so
arose from a youthful desire to control every aspect of interpretation, especially tempo rubato.
The 1838 version of the Transcendental Studies offers an abundance of such devices. In later
years, when he revised much of his early output, Liszt dropped them, presumably because he
felt that such matters are best left to each individual player. Their chief interest today is that they
tell us how Liszt himself might have interpreted his own music.
Alan Walker