Giovanni Doria Miglietta - Schubert - Liszt - Der Wanderer, Wander Fantasie, Song Transcriptions (2023) [24/96]

Schubert had been dead for seven years when, in 1838, the 27-year-old Liszt returned to Vienna for the first time since his childhood, when he had been taken to see Beethoven by his teacher Czerny an, perhaps apocryphally, been blessed by a kiss from the old man. Now apparently discovering the songs of Schubert for the first time, he began to produce transcriptions of Lieder almost as rapidly as they had been written in the first place.
Within eight years, Liszt had produced 56 such transcriptions from the treasury of Schubert’s Lieder, which are models of their kind: faithful, ingenious and gratifying to play. Giovanni Doria-Miglietta includes eight of them in this beautifully curated tribute from one genius to another: Du bist die Ruh; Das Wandern; Aufenthalt; Wohin; Gretchen am Spinnrade; Der Doppelgänger; Ständchen, and Der Wanderer.
The last of these Lieder had supplied Schubert with the melodic idea for a fantasy of his own which stands as his most brilliantly virtuosic work for the piano. Dating from 1822, the Wanderer Fantasy makes hardly less prodigious demands on the performer than the Hammerklavier Sonata of Beethoven from five years earlier, and in places is more awkwardly written. As the great pianist of his own age, Liszt rewrote the Fantasy in an act of homage, firstly as a concerto, then a solo piece, and this lesser-known version is recorded here by Giovanni Doria Miglietta.
As the pianist remarks in his own analytical essay for the album, Liszt did not seek to elaborate or decorate Schubert’s writing, the way his successors such as Alkan and Godowsky did in their tributes to Chopin. Rather, Liszt tends to replace sequences in arpeggios with passages of repeated chords or alternating octaves, and he often amuses himself by inserting additional voices (often in the left hand) enriching the polyphonic fabric. Many of these passages are pianistically more effective and in some cases technically more manageable.

TRACKLIST

1. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - Wanderer-Fantasie in C Major, Op. 15, D.760 (S.565a): I. Allegro con fuoco ma non Troppo
2. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - Wanderer-Fantasie in C Major, Op. 15, D.760 (S.565a): II. Adagio
3. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - Wanderer-Fantasie in C Major, Op. 15, D.760 (S.565a): III. Presto
4. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - Wanderer-Fantasie in C Major, Op. 15, D.760 (S.565a): IV. Allegro
5. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - Impromptu, Op. 90: III. Andante, S.565b/2
6. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: I. Du bist die Ruh, D.776 (S.558/3)
7. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: II. Das Wandern (S.565/1) from Die schöne Müllerin, D.795
8. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: III. Aufenthalt (S.560/3) from Schwanengesang, D.957
9. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: IV. Wohin? (S.565/5) from Die schöne Müllerin, D.795
10. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: V. Der Wanderer, D.489 (S.558/11)
11. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: VI. Gretchen am Spinnrade, D.118 (S.558/8)
12. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: VII. Der Doppelgänger (S.560/12) from Schwanengesang, D.957
13. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - 8 Lieder Transcriptions: VIII. Ständchen von Shakespeare, D.889 (S.558/9)
14. Giovanni Doria Miglietta - Impromptu, Op. 90: II. Allegro, S.565b/1



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