Liszt - Dessauers Lieder, S485 (Tryon)

These 'songs without words', as they might be called, represent a great proportion of the many such transcriptions that Liszt made. Just as with Liszt’s operatic transcriptions, there is quite a range of style and approach, but the primary aim here seems to have been the proselytizing one—making the music available to a wider public. Josef Dessauer (1798–1876), according to John Warrack’s sympathetic essay in Grove, and on the evidence of these transcriptions, was a gifted songwriter; sadly his name has really survived only as the dedicatee of Chopin’s opus 26 Polonaises!
Eichendorff’s ‘Temptation’ cajoles the listener into the garden by night to recall past joys—Liszt conjures up the poem’s imagery with very delicate (and remarkably inventive) figuration. Siegfried Kapper’s ‘Two Paths’ is a simple strophic poem describing the parting of the ways for two former lovers, and Clemens Brentano’s ‘Spanish Song’ is a bolero urging the poet on to Seville to worship his love. The increasing fervour of the poem is matched by Liszt’s variations.

0:00—Lockung
3:30—Zwei Wege
5:31—Spanisches Lied

Видео Liszt - Dessauers Lieder, S485 (Tryon) канала Andrei Cristian Anghel