Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 05/08/2013, uploaded on 10/28/2013

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Liszt’s Années de Pélerinage (‘Years of Pilgrimage’) sound unaffected by the scandal which arose when he left Paris in 1835 with a married woman from the grandest aristocratic circles, the Countess Marie d’Agoult.  For the next four years, the couple travelled together in Switzerland and Italy, and three children were born.  Venezia e Napoli was published in 1861 as a supplement to Années de Pélerinage.  The last piece of this set, Tarantella, a boisterous dance believed to be a cure for the deadly bite from a tarantula, is an evocative and triumphant showpiece that illustrates Liszt’s inventiveness and keyboard ingenuity at its finest.     Heidi Hau

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Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli (9’)              Franz Liszt

Inspired by his travels to Switzerland and Italy in the company of his lover Marie d’Agoult, Franz Liszt composed many of the pieces that make up in his Années de pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”) suites for piano between the 1830s and early 1850s—the exception being the third installment which followed much later. After the publication of the first two suites in 1855 and 1858, respectively, Liszt expanded the second suite, Dieuxème année (“Second Year”), by means of a supplement published in 1861 titled Venezia e Napoli containing an additional three pieces depicting his time on the Italian peninsula.

Like many of Liszt’s compositions, the three pieces of Venezia e Napoli borrow melodic material from the works of other composers. Last in the set, and the longest, Tarantella is based on a melody by Guillaume-Louis Cottrau. However, Liszt treats this melody in a wholly Romantic fashion, expanding its proportions far beyond that of the dance to those of a fantasia. Taking off at a breathtaking speed, Tarantella begins ominously in G minor with ferocious rumblings in the low register of the piano and ombined with phrases that freely alternate between duple and triple divisions of the beat, a nervous energy is created from the outset. However, the threatening mood of the opening is thwarted with the arrival of a good-humored melody concluding in the relative major. The fantasia continues in the middle section as Cottrau’s tune is transformed into a “Canzona napoletana.” Over a rippling, arpeggiated accompaniment, the cantando melody is heard with brilliant and florid ornamentations. Returning to the vigor of the opening but maintaining the major mode, a spirited Prestissimo restatement of the tarantella closes the piece.      Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.