Emanuel Ax, Piano
Performers
Emanuel Ax, Piano
Program
SCHUBERT Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 664
LISZT "Aufenthalt" from Lieder aus Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang
LISZT "Liebesbotschaft" from Lieder aus Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang
LISZT "Der Müller und der Bach" from Müllerlieder von Franz Schubert
LISZT "Horch, horch! die Lerch" from 12 Lieder von Franz Schubert
LISZT Vallée d'Obermann
SCHUBERT Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960
Encore:
LISZT "Ständchen," S. 560, No. 7 (after Schubert)
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.At a Glance
The same qualities that made Schubert a great song composer—his seemingly bottomless stockpile of melody, his ability to invest the simplest of musical phrases with dramatic significance, his quicksilver changes of keys and moods—are equally apparent in his solo piano music. Just as Schubert’s mature sonatas combine the intimacy of the salon with an almost symphonic breadth, so Liszt experimented with forms, harmonies, and sonorities that anticipated the musical language of impressionism and modernism. The Hungarian composer-pianist was extravagant in his regard for Schubert. Although he resided in Vienna for a few months as a boy in the early 1820s, Liszt seems never to have met the composer whom he revered as the “beloved hero of the heaven of my youth.” Starting in the early 1830s, when he took Europe by storm as a touring virtuoso, Liszt transcribed nearly five dozen Schubert songs to perform on his solo recitals. The magic of his playing was captured by a critic for the London Times, who compared him to one of the great Italian tenors of the day. “The soft whisperings of his piano passages seemed to compete with the tones of Rubini’s voice,” he wrote, “and the showers of light notes which he scattered through some of the variations realized every idea that can be formed of fairy music.”