Liszt: Sonata in B Minor

Cambridge Music Handbooks

by Kenneth Hamilton

Liszt's B minor Sonata is now regarded as his finest work for piano, and one of the pinnacles of Romantic piano music. This book, written by a pianist who has performed the Sonata extensively, includes a survey of Liszt's early attempts at sonata composition and clears away some of the persisent myths regarding program music in Liszt's output. The central chapters, built around an analysis of the B minor Sonata, discuss various interpretative approaches, while the concluding chapter treats the performance practice and performing history of the work. This is the first book to elucidate this ground-breaking piece for the general reader.

Genres: Music

89 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 1996

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor (finished in 1853) is not just one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most physically demanding works of the Romantic piano repertoire, and really of the entire piano repertoire. It stretches for 30-33 minutes, depending on the pianist, without interruption, incorporating radical changes of tempo and mood. It begins and ends quietly (indeed vast swaths of it are breathtakingly pianissimo) but it would hardly be Lisztian if it didn’t feature runs of blazingly fast and loud octaves. There’s also a “Grandioso” theme of nearly unmatched nobility and a wonderful fugue section at about the two-thirds mark. I find it one of the most dramatic and glorious piano works ever written. Yet, astonishingly, the sonata was not well received by most critics and audiences (including Brahms, who famously fell asleep as Liszt performed it for him, and Clara Schumann, whose husband was the dedicatee). It was simply too radical for some ears.

Kenneth Hamilton quickly dispenses with the suggestions that the Sonata was meant to be programmatic, and examines three analyses of its structure; Sharon Winklhofer finds it to be one long single movement; William Newman and Rey Longyear find a “double function” – that it can be seen either as one single movement, or multiple movements. Newman finds four, Longyear three. Its ambiguity makes it exceptionally rich and original, says Hamilton, and “in this it is a true successor not only to the late sonatas of Beethoven, but also to the piece for which it was reciprocally dedicated, Schumann’s Fantasy [Op. 17].”

One of the frustrations of listening to or learning music from the era before recordings is that we have to guess how pieces were meant to be performed, and were actually performed. We’d kill to hear Chopin playing Chopin, and Liszt playing Liszt. Liszt was not just a performer, but a revered teacher, and Hamilton has summarized (crudely, he says) some of Liszt’s teaching points, which are far flung in various other primary sources:

1. The music must flow in large phrases, not chopped up with overaccentuation. In lyrical works such as Bénediction de Dieu this does not imply particularly fast speeds, or alla breve tempi, but rather manipulation of tone and articulation to produce a breathing, singing melody.

2. The musical sense must continue through the frequent rhetorical pauses in Liszt’s music. ‘Don’t mince it up.’

3. Expression should always avoid the sentimental. Liszt was emphatic about this, and often parodied what he regarded as excessively affected playing. The still common idea of Liszt as a performer – and composer – prone to lapses of precious sentimentality could not be further from the truth. This should extend to posture – no swaying around (like Clara Schumann). Sit upright, and don’t look at the keys, rather straight ahead.

4. Piano tone is often to be imagined in orchestral terms – for example, clarinet in the central A♭ melody of Funérailles. According to Friedheim, even in his advanced years, when some other aspects of his technique had deteriorated, Liszt was still unrivalled in building up an orchestral-style climax on the keyboard.

5. Figuration in melodic sections of Liszt’s music should be slow, not brilliant. In upper registers he usually played filigree passage work una corda. He had a fondness for adding mordents and other embellishments to emphasize some parts of the melodic line.

6. A certain flexibility of tempo is in order in most of Liszt’s music.

7. The wrong notes of a d’Albert or a Rubinstein do not matter, their inaccuracies are insignificant compared with their musical expressiveness. Splashy, insensitive playing, however, brought Liszt’s wrath upon the perpetrator. In his 1941 radio broadcast on Liszt, Lamond talked about Liszt’s surprising strictness and concern for musical cleanliness. Lamond’s awe of Liszt’s censure is still apparent in his voice after nearly sixty years.

Here’s an astonishing rendition by the renowned Liszt interpreter André Laplante, with a score so you can follow along:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCHE-U...

[Dominic H · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a pleasurable rabbit hole this book turned out to be on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Like the even older BBC Music Guides the Cambridge series set a high standard for concise, informative monographs. Here Kenneth Hamilton, a phenomenally gifted pianist. writes with clarity, erudition and wit. Liszt and the sonata form becomes a riveting topic in his hands as does 19th century piano playing and indeed 19th century pianos. Brilliant.