Comparison Recordings:
Complete
Tone Poems: Budapest SO/Árpad Joó.
Hungaroton 12677/81 {Also available on Brilliant Classics 99938}
Gewandhaus
SO/Kurt Masur EMI [ADD]/[DDD] 7243 5 74521 2 0 {Also available
on Musical Heritage Society [ADD] 522171L & [DDD] 522534M,
North America Only}
Hunnenschlacht:
VSOO/Hermann Scherchen. [ADD] Westminster MCAD2-9832 {soon to
be re-released by TAHRA records}
LPO/Bernard
Haitink. [ADD] Philips 438754
The Symphonic Poems of
Liszt vary in their degree of familiarity although integral
recordings have been more common lately, of which this disk
appears to be one installment. These three are among the less
well known, but each is particularly interesting in different
ways. Festklänge (Festival sounds) is based on
a tune, presumably an East European folk-song, which later*
became the Canadian national anthem. Liszt’s work, sure enough,
at one point plays the tune with all due importance and dignity,
and develops this theme along with several others.
Ce qu’on entend sur la
montagne (What you hear in the Mountains), based on a poem
by Victor Hugo, seems at first to be more about the ocean than
about mountains but when we read the poem we see that the mountain
is right on the coast of Brittany and it is from there that we
ascend to the heights whereupon we encounter, among other things,
shepherd’s pipes and pre-echoes of Sibelius’s First Symphony.
What the poet hears is the collective pleading voice of suffering
humanity rising from the earth to be answered by the sounds of
the angelic chorus descending from heaven, which is unheard on
earth below because of the clamor of human lamentations. Naxos has posted the poem in
English on their website.
Hunnenschlacht (Battle against the
Huns) describes violent warfare and employs the organ playing
a Christian hymn in the finale to symbolize the defeat and conversion
of the invading Huns. The organ here is a real one but rather
subtle. For a huge pipe organ and a brilliant performance,
try Bernard Haitink and the LPO. Scherchen uses a small squeaky
stage organ, but adopts a punishing tempo which has the orchestra
struggling to keep up, creating an authentic and exciting sense
of battle.
These recordings are excellent,
and the performances are quite good, with big, loud cymbal crashes
where called for; perhaps a little better than Masur, not quite
so good as Arpad Joo, although the organ in Budapest is heard to be grotesquely
out of tune, however ingeniously the artists cope with this
problem. All these versions are available at bargain prices.
But for some additional excitement listen to Solti or Haitink.
Paul Shoemaker
see also Review
by Michael Cookson
*Actually rather recently.
I attended one of the early public performances at the Vancouver
Expo in 1986. Although the first version was actually written
in 1880, the official words of the current version (in both French
and English) were legally adopted only in 1980.
Other Liszt Symphonic Poems are available from these artists
on:
Naxos 8.550487: Tasso,
Les Preludes, Mazeppa, Prometheus.
Naxos 8.553355: From
the Cradle to the Grave, Orpheus, Die Ideale, Hamlet.
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