Liszt - Nuits d'été à Pausilippe, S399 (Costantino Catena) 

Thanks :)

Andrei Cristian Anghel no problem :)

Oh...me, too ! What a gem !

you're welcome

This is a classical channel with class. Please avoid kkk'ing here

@@tigerboom9030 kkkk xd

Well put....and that skittishness is a hallmark of the Italian musical style....the operatic freedom, rubato, always forward motion, etc. Completely opposite of the German.

Actually the Soirees Musicales stick very closely to the originals with less embellishments and harmonic alterations (ie none as far as I can hear) than the Schubert transcriptions, and that to me is a weakness and maybe a reason why they aren't heard often. Charming though they are in their original form, for me they sound a bit thin for piano alone and at nearly an hour do outstay their welcome; here I feel the material would benefit from some Lisztification.

SimonR SimonR Exactly, examples such as the Rossini Soirées musicales and the Bunte Reihe transcriptions although wonderfully adapted with charming Lisztian pianistic flourish and faithful to the source material (speaking in terms of Liszt transcriptions here, it's pretty faithful); it is indeed a weakness as Liszt's treatments in his material are often more nuanced and far more developed (with exceptions to some obviously inhumane bravura paraphrases he made)-and examples such as the Schwanengesang transcriptions (I'd dare say all of his Schubert transcriptions are enhancements), his transcriptions of a few Schumann songs (especially Widmung, Frühlingsnacht as well as Provenzalisches Minnelied) and the Robert Franz lieder transcriptions are proofs of that.

@@jerry_moo What a coincidence, I was listening to the Bunte Reihe shortly after this as random selections - you, I, Valerie Tryon and the person on MusicWeb International who reviewed her recording of it (AFAIK the only one) must be the only people who know this work! I wondered what compelled Liszt to transcribe the whole set? (I can understand that with the Franz transcriptions, as he's still quite highly regarded as a song composer today.) Or was he commissioned? Ferdinand David's main claims to fame today are as a violinist and adviser to his good friend Mendelssohn, and I wouldn't recommend first-time listeners to listen to the set in its 72-minute entirety, but it's quite listenable and only the Kinderlied, Gondollied and first version of the Ungarisch are really disposable (and in that case only because it's overshadowed by the second version, the only piece in the set that sounds truly Lisztian). The music sounds much like other minor contemporaries of Liszt (Stephen Heller and Niels Gade spring to mind) - Mendelssohn is the main influence, but there are touches of Schumann and even Chopin here and there. There's not much depth apart from in slower numbers like Erinnerung, Elegie, Menuetto and In russischer Weise, but they're quite enjoyable salon pieces for the most part with some distinct melodic and harmonic touches.

Thank you!

Mulțumesc :)

A toi aussi!

Rossini the best italian composer?

@@nicolag1544 Well, who else would you pick from that era? Scarlatti?

Thoughtful comment. I'm somewhat surprised you didn't mention the Reminiscences de Norma, one of Liszt's greatest pieces, which recreates the drama of Bellini's opera with incredible imagination and inventiveness. I think perhaps that Rossini's music is in a sense self-sufficient, and unlike Donizetti and Bellini doesn't lend itself to the equivalent of jazz improvisation. It's telling that the most popular of Liszt's Rossini pieces is probably the most straightforward: his transcription of the Guillaume Tell overture.

@@treesny That comment of mine hasn't aged very well, at the time I wrote it I was going through Liszt's works in chronological order and I hadn't got to Reminiscences de Norma (I'd heard it before but had forgotten about it). Also the Soirees Musicales (which are basically straight transcriptions of the Rossini originals) have gone up quite a bit in my estimation - they seemed a bit vapid at first, but it does help if you hear the original songs first and that way you appreciate their charm and imagination and the skillful way Liszt has arranged them. Rossini himself is a composer I'm just starting to get to know properly BTW, I just got a 9-CD set of four of his operas for Christmas!

Sad

Oh yes, this is a constant source of sadness for me too...

aka brahms lullaby