Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 08/12/2009, uploaded on 09/13/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Besides his own prolific output, Franz Liszt fashioned other composer’s works into pieces for the piano, making many of them accessible to a wider audience. In the case of his famous transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies or of Schubert’s lieder, these arrangements remained relatively true to the originals. With other composer’s works, such as Verdi, Liszt drew freely from the melodic material of his contemporaries, creating dazzling pieces of showmanship. Inevitably, this but only aided the reputation of those composers whose music Liszt borrowed but perhaps damaged his own by giving his critics more reason to accuse him of writing unsubstantial and artistically shallow concert music. In 1859, Liszt crafted three pieces based on selections from Verdi’s operas. Dubbed “paraphrases,” they were premiered during a series of concerts given by Hans von Bülow in Berlin.

The Concert Paraphrase of “Rigoletto” is based on the famous quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore” from the opera’s final act. The quartet comes at a dramatic point in the opera in which the womanizing Duke of Mantua, courting his latest conquest Maddalena, is unknowingly watched by his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto and his daughter Gilda, who is hopelessly in love with the Duke. Appalled at the Duke’s licentiousness, Rigoletto vows to hire an assassin and have him killed. Liszt’s treatment of Verdi’s melodic material encompasses the range of emotions inherent in the scene. Framed by an introduction and coda fashioned out of the principle melodies, Verdi’s music is shaped by Liszt into a brilliant pianistic discourse, aptly suited to its expressive capabilities and sonority.       Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.