Beethoven, symphony no. 2, 2nd movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 3 (“Eroica”), 1st movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 3 (“Eroica”), 4th movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 4, 1st movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 5, 3rd movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 6 (“Pastorale”), 1st movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 7, 1st movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 7, 2nd  movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 8, 1st movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 8, 4th  movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 9, 2nd  movement

 

Beethoven, symphony no. 9, 4th  movement

 

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Beethoven’s nine symphonies exist in the form of transcriptions of all nine for solo piano by Franz Liszt. Liszt’s transcriptions of the symphonies are considered to be among the most technically demanding piano music ever written.

During an interview about a year before his death in 1989, Vladimir Horowitz said that he considered Liszt’s piano transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies the ”greatest works written for the piano,” and that he deeply regretted not having made them a cornerstone of his repertory. I have come to understand what he meant.

For Liszt, a piano transcription of a Beethoven symphony was not just some virtuoso stunt. He paid homage to the symphonies by rendering them for piano in amazingly scrupulous detail, and used the instrument to comment on Beethoven’s music. The actual musical content of the symphonies … comes through with fresh impact in these transcriptions.

Liszt was also celebrating the piano as the only instrument capable of evoking an entire symphonic sound world. It takes enormous virtuosity to play these works.

— “In Keyboard Rhapsody with a Flamboyant Liszt.” by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times,  March 19, 1999

 

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These transcriptions enable one to hear the symphonies anew. An example from my own experience: Listening to Beethoven’s eight symphony in this version, I feel it’s “underrated.”

What do you mean underrated, one might say? Don’t all of Beethoven’s symphonies rank at the top of the symphonic form. Well, then I might say, it should be performed more often!

 

— Roger W. Smith

   September 2017