Liszt - Grande Fantaisie symphonique, S120 (Jandó)

In 1831, Hector Berlioz composed the first version of his monodrama Lélio, ou le retour à la vie (Lelio, or the return to life) as a sequel to the Symphonie fantastique; Liszt, who was amongst Berlioz’s staunchest admirers, had already transcribed the Symphonie for solo piano, but there was no chance of his doing the same for its sequel. Instead, and much to Berlioz’s liking, he used just two themes from Lélio to construct a large-scale work in two joined parts: the Grande Fantaisie symphonique. The important word here is ‘symphonique’, which Liszt is using here for the first time; the work being an epic mix of Berliozian devilry and pure unfettered Lisztian inspiration, with orchestral writing that is full, noble and of symphonic proportions, and the piano part, although a proper solo part, fully integrated into the orchestral texture.

The original manuscript of this work, long undiscovered, surfaced at auction in France in 1998, and it revealed immediately that Liszt carried out his own orchestration—it is astonishing that there are still commentators who believe the hoary myth that Liszt only began to study orchestration in his Weimar years, and that much of his instrumentation was done by other hands. This is nonsense, and the Lélio Fantasy shows it to have been so from the beginning.

Liszt’s fantasy is constructed about the ballad for tenor and piano Le pêcheur (The fisherman), the first musical number in Lélio, and the third number—a song for baritone, men’s chorus and orchestra called Chanson de brigands (Brigands' Song). Berlioz’s ballad has two printed versions of the melody of The Fisherman to allow for performance in German as well as French (the original poem is by Goethe), and Liszt generally uses the ‘German’ melody, which begins many phrases on an extra upbeat, but for the piano cadenzas he uses the ‘French’ melody, which begins more starkly on the first beat of the bar. Liszt prepares the arrival of the theme with an imaginative introduction which hints darkly at the prospect of some expansive melody, which finally appears as a piano solo (after a brief cadenza), and then in dialogue with the oboe. The first development of the theme is a dramatic recitative, which dies away with a trill, and the second part of Berlioz’s melody is introduced. Both parts of the melody are developed at length, and foreign tonalities are explored, the section ending with a stupefying explosion from the soloist onto bare, stentorian octave C sharps which introduce what is effectively the second movement, in 6/8 still, but much livelier. C sharp becomes D flat in B flat minor, and we are led to F major for the Brigands’ Song, where Liszt alternates between preserving Berlioz’s orchestration and arranging the repeated phrases for solo piano; he continues to follow Berlioz to the end of the tutti passage and then gently takes the musical reins, first by arranging, then by developing the material, until the music bursts into 2/4 and a passage in repeated chords brings this part of the movement to a full close, and a new pair of themes is introduced. Where these new themes come from is a mystery; they are certainly not in Lélio, nor do they seem to be among Berlioz’s published works (still, their inclusion here must have met Berlioz's approval, since he conducted this works' first performance). The first of these themes is presented in conjunction with the repeated chords aforementioned at 15:26 (the second mysterious theme at 15:52) and then part of the Brigands’ Song is subjected to chromatic development, culminating in a cadenza; the recapitulation of the song is then decorated with repeated notes from the piano and col legno accompaniment from the strings. After a repeat of the tutti the coda begins with a reprise of the Fisherman’s Song, before resuming the faster tempo and returning to the material of untraced origin, interspersed with fragments of the Brigands’ Song to bring together the threads of the twenty-three-year-old Liszt’s very confident composition.

Pianist: Jenő Jandó
Conductor: András Ligeti
Orchestra: Budapest Symphony Orchestra

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