Liszt: Transcendental Etudes S.139 (Clidat, Ovchinnikov, Kissin)

Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes (TE) are one of the truly awe-inspiring triumphs of the piano literature. While Chopin elevated the etude to an art form with the subtlety, expressiveness, and innovation of his writing, his etudes don’t contain any moments which make you go – “A piano can do *that*?” Liszt’s TE really are a series of sublimely powerful sound illustrations – they show that an etude does not have to be merely elegant; it can be vast, or mysterious, cataclysmic, funny, despairing. They’re not even really etudes (it’d be quite silly to attempt them in an effort to improve your general technique); they’re impressionistic explorations of what visionary figuration can achieve on the keyboard.

You’ve got No.1, bristling with deliciously incoherent energy; No.2, with its open dissonances and surreal octave leaps firing off like sparkplug stutters; No.3, with its complex syncopation and the elevated sublimity of its modulations; No.4, wild, raw, brutal with chromaticism and rhythmic violence; No.5, airy, mercurial, impish, caught in a haze of chromatic decoration; No.6, both like a funeral march and a great coruscating church hymn; No.7, glitteringly coy, wearing its heroism with gentle irony; No.8, a manic, thrashing soundscape of a hunt, with broken octaves throbbing like blood in the arteries; No.9, a wonderfully delicate set of variations on a wistful melody that occasionally descends into black swarms of cadenzas; No.10, a startlingly dramatic elaboration on the romantic idiom in nearly perfect sonata form; No.11 and 12, both absolute masterworks of impressionism, with the former featuring arpeggiated fingerwork and chordal passages that move with incredible inevitability towards heights of ecstasy, and the latter being a despairing and movingly bleak portrait of snow slowly blanketing a dead and ashen world. There are vast technical difficulties, true, but they are exclusively in service to the music: the tremolos in No.12 are crucial to the effect, and the legendarily difficult No.5 owes much of its difficult fingering to its use of the diminished scale (a radical innovation of Liszt’s) and the semi-chromatic and harmonised trill that generates its playful tone.

There are two full performances in this video; the first is by Clidat, and the second is a mixture of performances by Ovchinnikov and Kissin (5, 7, 10, 11, 12). If you’ve not listened to Clidat, I’d strongly encourage you to do so; she’s rarely mentioned, but a superb interpreter of Liszt. She brings to the TE a surprisingly personal, dry/transparent style that emphasises the impressionistic and episodic nature of the music; her recording of Mazeppa (No.4) is the best I’ve ever heard. Sometimes she even modifies certain passages, although these slight changes are fairly tasteful. Ovchinnikov’s playing is remarkably elegant, featuring fine voicing and extremely well-judged tempi. Kissin is relentlessly exciting and dramatic, with lots of rubato; the way he manages the counterpoint in No.12 is unparalleled; and the precision and lightness of no.5 is pretty incredible.

Clidat –
00:00 – No.1
00:51 – No.2 [Note the dramatic tempo change at 2:22.]
03:01 – No.3 [The long crescendi are played beautifully.]
07:51 No.4 [Stunning. Note the coyness of the chromatic line at 10:56, the textural changes at 9:05 and 12:11, and the sheer swagger in the broadening at 12:42]
15:08 – No.5
18:31 – No.6 [Note the faster-than-usual tempo and the interesting decision to deemphasise the lowest bass notes in the opening]
23:24 – No.7
27:55 – No.8 [Clidat’s way with the middle section is incredible – she brings a poignancy to the melody that is totally unexpected, and even in the end she makes this etude sound giddily and luxuriantly romantic – in the “love song” sense.]
33:18 – No.9 [Surprisingly taut and compelling. Note how Clidat differentiates carefully between the changing note values of the little turn that begins the main theme whenever it is repeated.]
42:41 – No.10 [Note how carefully the truncated note values are observed, and the sharpness of attack]
47:10 – No.11 [Beautifully liquid arpeggios]
56:14 – No.12

Ovchinnikov, Kissin –
1:00:49 – No.1
1:01:41 – No.2
1:03:42 – No.3 [O. brings a moving serenity to this piece that only Arrau equals]
1:09:06 – No.4
1:16:29 – No.5 [K.’s stunningly clear recording adopts a perky and precise approach, in contrast to C.’s preference for blurring lines for more impressionistic effect]
1:19:46 – No.6
1:25:11 – No.7
1:30:18 – No.8
1:35:00 – No.9 [O.’s phrasing here is absolutely flawless]
1:44:17 – No.10
1:49:09 – No.11 [K. builds up to some pretty earth-shattering climaxes here]
1:58:09 – No.12 [Note how K. separates voices by letting his hands go slightly out of sync, e.g., starting at 1:59:43]

Видео Liszt: Transcendental Etudes S.139 (Clidat, Ovchinnikov, Kissin) канала Ashish Xiangyi Kumar