If you could RESURRECT Liszt - What would you play for him?

Interesting question…since more than just about any composer - Liszt was interested in advancing music and laying the groundwork for the future.

So if we could resurrect him and play only ONE 60-90 minute programme’s worth of music for him to hear how music had progressed since his passing; what would your selections include?

My selection would include -

Lyapunov TE12(at least that one, maybe more), not so much to hear progression but to hear a tribute that honours him

Ravel’s Gaspard would undoubtedly be included - new kinds & heights of virtuosity and a new impressionistic soundworld hinted at by his late works

Rachmaninoff - selected etudes &/or preludes - to show him the advanced russian soundworld of romanticism

Scriabin - vers la flamme - actually quite an accessible and brief piece that encapsulates his style and advancements

Prokofiev - Concerto2 1st movement Cadenza alone. Just because :sunglasses:

Godowsky - Selected etudes after Chopin to show advancements in tech possibilities

Rzewski - Mofos united MART edit - selected variations to show samples of more modernistic compositional techniques around an accessible theme

Hamelin - La Campanella trannie - to show him a sample of turn of the 21st century tonal tech on a theme that he loved and was familiar to him

Einaudi - to infuriate him enough to go and sit down at da 88 n show da 88 world how it’z really done :pimp: :sunglasses:

Well, I wouldn’t play stuff personally but play recs…

Anyway, some sort of selection from

Liapunov etudes
Late Prokofiev sonatas
Late Scriabin sonatas
Rach etudes tableaux
Janacek 1.X.1905
Ravel Alborada
Ligeti etudes
Finnissy transcriptions
Ziff Bee as encore. He HAS to hear :zif:'s playing.

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It’s also interesting to speculate as to which of those he’d actually appreciate and enjoy.

Finnissy for example I can see him really thinking is just noise :dong:

I would bring him a stack of scores and ask him to play them for me.

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Think he’d enjoy the ones he found familiar and approachable to sightread or enjoy the ones he really struggled with more?

I’d say the latter, Gaspard for example…I think that would take him a bit of time to adjust to.

Vingt regards

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He was always a great champion of new music, so I think he’d enjoy it. Especially since this music is descendant from his. I don’t know whether even he could sight read Gaspard, however.

I’d love to show him something like Messiaen as well, but I’d take him there through a musical journey of sorts so he could clearly see the path(s) music took on the way and the ideas which led it there. I think I’d start with early Debussy (not that he’d enjoy it) and early Scriabin to show how France lightened the romanticism he knew and the Russians deepened it, from there move to Ravel and Prokofiev, late Debussy and mid Scrib, and then something short by Webern or Schönberg. From there Messiaen or similar, and then lastly Rzewski to sum it up and show how abstractions and atonality can be used alongside narrative and tonality. Then finally I’d backtrack to Rachmaninoff, maybe Medtner or Lyapunov, where we’d linger a while to give him hope and show him where romanticism ended. The Chop/Gods wouldn’t be high on my list actually. I’m sure he’d find them nifty, but I think he’d be more interested in the big, overarching ideas than the kind of cleverness found in Godowsky.

Like festin(?) however I think he’d be just as interested in the development of piano playing, so I’d choose recordings in a very deliberate way. I also wouldn’t miss to show him Richter’s Beethoven and Pletnev’s Scarlatti for instance. In fact it would be just as fun to take him on a separate pianistic journey, and show the key influences, trends and ideas which guided development during the 20th C. I think he’d be just as stunned there as with composition, if not more. He did see (or prophesize) most of music after all, but I only think he saw interpretation and piano playing in its infancy.

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Grr. I forgot the Berg Sonata, which I think he’d find interesting.

Messiaen is a very good call.

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hahha

not Metallica ? :sunglasses:

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Hhahaha DIZ FUCKIN VID

abzolute BZ

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Fuck. Clicked on it, and it’s dat CUNT again. I’m not giving it the time of day. I’m surprised he doesn’t use da rock’z ultrazlow practice regime to argue for octuple beat…

And wut iz dis? “The new fashion of more mechanical and rapid piano playing that started around 1840”. Never heard of it before. Sounds like complete fucking bullshit he’s made up to create some point or other.

I’m just gonna be disappointed in a description of da :pimp: practicing anyway, when I find that it’s not something like “smoked a big cigar. Improed an exercise in double thirds. Glass of brandy. Five mins of alt oct zpazz rape. Another glass of brandy. Bj off female student. Repeat.”

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Haha da WIM iz actually quite pozzibly da moz important mofo in da 21zt century 88 zcene

A mofo hu cummah wiz zuch inzufferable zheeyat dat he inzpire a NU WAVE ov fury n backlazh againzt hiz azz

Diz mofo haf actually lit a fire unda da zumwut complacent azz ov da SDC

Now we haf a clear enemy n a renewed energy to move forth wiz tru purpoze :approved:

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I can’t take him seriously at all. He seems to be constructing reasons why we should play far slower than kids at conservatories manage. It would be vaguely persuasive if he cud unleazh a sub 2 min 10/1, just he was choosing not to. I bet any money he can’t.

The missing composer so far, and one that admired/was influenced by Liszt very much both as a pianist and a composer: Béla Bartók. I’m quite sure Liszt would be fascinated by this new nationalistic idiom that was in a way a continuation of his own (late) style.

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Fixed dat. :dong:

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Hehe, I have to leave this half-way through but aside from his conclusions I think this was a really good vid. It’s just that he’s so snowed in on his double beat theory. “Wee reed here dat Liszt played Bethoven much bedter dan his contemporaries, so dis proves he played with two beets per bar jus like mee”.

I mean he even reads a quote by Moscheles himself which falsifies his theory.

Just wait until he reads the account (in Heine?) of Liszt playing so fast that when he gradually accelerandos he reaches an impossible tempo, at which point a chick is supposed to ‘faint’ in the audience, so that da pimp can restart from a saner speed. :smiley: