Concerto Pathétique

The ''Concerto pathétique'' ( S.258/2), completed in 1866, is Franz Liszt's most substantial and ambitious two-piano work. At least three piano concerto arrangements of the work have been made by other composers, based on Liszt's suggestions.

History and significance

In 1851 Breitkopf & Härtel published the solo piano work ''Grosses Concert-Solo'' (in modern editions as ''Grosses Konzertsolo'') (S.176) by Franz Liszt. Though not as popular as the later Piano Sonata in B minor by the same composer, the work achieves significance by the fact that it anticipates the ''Sonata'' as a large-scale non- programmatic work. It shows structural similarities to the ''Sonata'' and obvious thematic relationship to both the ''Sonata'' and the ''Faust Symphony''.

One unpublished earlier version of the work exists, titled in French in the manuscript ''Grand Solo de concert'' (S.175a). This version differs structurally from the published ''Grosses Concert-Solo'', thus revealing the existence of interesting material for a study on the genesis of Liszt's gradual innovations in constructing a large-scale musical organism, which were to come to full fruition in the ''Sonata''.

In 1866 a two-piano version was published under the title ''Concerto pathétique'' (S.258/2) which, though not differing structurally from the ''Grosses Concert-Solo'', introduces a more effective layout of the musical thoughts, mainly due to an innovative concerto-like treatment of the two-piano ensemble. The initial conception of a projected piano concerto can further be proved by a number of extant piano concerto arrangements by various composers, including orchestra sketches by Liszt himself (the unpublished manuscript containing the piece's original (French) title ''Grand solo de concert'') (S.365).

While the solo piano version is rarely performed today, the ''Concerto pathétique'' has become a repertoire piece of the two-piano genre.

Genesis of the "four-movements-in-one" form

The experimental nature of the ''Concerto pathétique'' gives it an outstanding presence in the Liszt oeuvre. The composer made many attempts to find an appropriate title – ''Grand solo de concert'', ''Grand Concert'', ''Morceau de Concert'', etc. – indicating that this work was an experiment with new forms. Even the Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major which Liszt begun work on in the same year (1849) as the ''Grand Solo de concert''/''Grosses Concert-Solo'' had its genesis ten years earlier in a seemingly self-contradictory entitled work ''Concerto sans orchestre'' (S.524a). The fact that the solo ''Grosses Concert-Solo'' has been overshadowed by the later two-piano version has obscured the importance of the former as one of Liszt's largest and most ambitious original works for the instrument. The ''Grosses Concert-Solo'' anticipates several of the most salient features of Liszt's undisputed masterwork , the Piano Sonata in B minor, namely the non-programmatic "four-movements-in-one" form.

The earlier unpublished solo version (S.175a) as well as the unpublished orchestra accompaniment sketches for a projected piano concerto version (S.365) do not contain the slow '' Andante sostenuto'' middle section, which shows that Liszt's initial conception was one virtuoso sonata-allegro movement with exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. The new "comprehensive" sonata form is the result of an insertion of a slow movement (sometimes compared to the '' Lento sostenuto'' of Chopin's Fantasy in F minor) between exposition and development and a cyclic recurrence of the slow movement theme between recapitulation and coda in order to achieve unity. Since this afterthought of Liszt does not quite agree with the initial intentions, the result is a somewhat loose rhapsodic structure with interlinked sections held together by a few insertions.

Liszt did not smooth out those "rough edges". He simply used some of the thematic material to compose an entirely new work in similar large-scale form – the Sonata in B minor. Here the form convinces because the thematic ideas have been contrived to match each other, which makes the thematic transformation, already apparent in the ''Grosses Concert-Solo'' and many earlier works, more natural. In contrast to the ''Grosses Concert-Solo'', the accompaniment figurations in the sonata are permeated by thematic allusions resulting in a more logically compelling development of ideas.

It is typical for Liszt that he did not destroy the earlier solo work (''Grosses Concert-Solo'') but rearranged it in the two-piano version ''Concerto pathétique''. Since Liszt had projected a piano concerto version but dropped the plan, the two-piano arrangement can be seen as a sort of compromise. In this version Liszt seems to have been more interested in the concerto-like effects of the two-piano ensemble than in structural innovations, because he left the overall design of the solo version unaltered. The suggestion of a concerto version can be detected in various remarks such as ''quasi arpa'', ''quasi timpani'', etc., and the fact that the first piano part is more virtuosic throughout. Later concerto arrangers, like Eduard Reuss (1885, corrected by Liszt (S.365a)), Richard Burmeister (1898) or Gábor Darvas (1952), have usually incorporated the second piano part into the orchestra part.

Despite the structural relationship between the ''Concerto pathétique'' and the Sonata, Liszt always rejected the idea of a preconceived form. In his ''Faust Symphony'', which employs related thematic material, he does not attempt to write another "four-movement-in-one" work.

Concert piece or concerto?

The word ''concert(o)'', except for its spelling, is the only consistent part of the various titles of the ''Concerto pathétique'', though its meaning is open to interpretation. The German word ''Concert'' (modern spelling ) could mean both ''concert'' and ''concerto'', but the titles ''Grosses Concert-Solo'' or ''Grand solo de concert'' seem just to denote a large-scale concert piece (as opposed to a short salon piece for example), whereas ''Concerto pathétique'' calls to mind a concerto. The prefix ''Concert'' () or the French ''de concert'' could also mean a concerto-like and/or one-movement work for solo and orchestra (such as Schumann's ''Konzertstück'' and '' Konzert-Allegro'', Chopin's '' Allegro de concert'', or Weber's ''Konzertstück

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases