Liszt: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 4 And 6

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Franz Liszt (1811-1886)Piano Transcriptions of Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 4 & 6 (S464/R128)Symphony No.4 in B flat major, Op.60Symphony No.6 in F major, Op.68 (Pastoral)The first piece that Liszt played in his first concert was the three last movements of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, "Scherzo, orage et Finale". The transcription of this great and complicated composition for the pianoforte was a task as daring as it was difficult, if it was not to be only a brilliant concert piece, but much more than that, a work without arbitrary additions or omissions reproduced with artistic fidelity and scrupulousness according to its spirit and its innermost being, and only an artist like Liszt, who, with an unbounded reverence for Beethoven, has rare gifts in understanding the great German master, only such an artist was able and dared venture on so dangerous an undertaking.Heinrich Adami, Allgemeiner Theaterzeitung. 21.11.1839 Born at Raiding, in Hungary, in 1811, the son of Adam Liszt, a steward in the service of Haydn’s former patrons, the Esterházy Princes, Franz Liszt had early encouragement from members of the Hungarian nobility, allowing him in 1822 to move to Vienna, for lessons with Czerny and a famous meeting with Beethoven.From there he moved to Paris, where Cherubini refused him admission to the Conservatoire.Nevertheless he was able to impress audiences by his performance, now supported by the Erard family, piano manufacturers whose wares he was able to advertise in the concert tours on which he embarked.In 1827 Adam Liszt died, and Franz Liszt was now joined again by his mother in Paris, while using his time to teach, to read and benefit from the intellectual society with which he came into contact.His interest in virtuoso performance was renewed when he heard the great violinist Paganini, whose technical accomplishments he now set out to emulate. The years that followed brought a series of compositions, including transcriptions of songs and operatic fantasies, part of the stock-in-trade of a virtuoso.Liszt’s relationship with a married woman, the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, led to his departure from Paris for years of travel abroad, first to Switzerland, then back to Paris, before leaving for Italy, Vienna and Hungary.By 1844 his relationship with his mistress, the mother of his three children, was at an end, but his concert activities continued until 1847, the year in which his association began with Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Polish heiress, the estranged wife of a Russian prince.The following year he settled with her in Weimar, the city of Goethe, turning his attention now to the development of a newer form of orchestral music, the symphonic poem, and, as always, to the revision and publication of earlier compositions. It was in 1861, at the age of fifty, that Liszt moved to Rome, following Princess Carolyne, who had settled there a year earlier.Divorce and annulment seemed to have opened the