LANG LANG - La Campanella - Liszt/Paganini

Creating a New Music World: Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasia

By Maureen Buja, Interlude

The Fantasia / Fantasy as a genre in the 19th century (versus the 17th-century English fantasias, which were very different) gave the composer enormous range to use his imagination on whatever he had decided to fantasize about. In Liszt’s case, his Fantasia on Hungarian Folk Melodies from 1849–1852 takes Hungarian folk themes of contrasting character and, in a free form, makes improvisational-style permutations on the music.

Hermann Biow: Franz Liszt, 1943

To look at where Liszt got this material, we have to look back through his own catalogue. Liszt’s Magyar Rhapsodiak/Ungarische Rhapsodien, S242/R105c, which was written for solo piano around 1846–1847, uses many of the same melodies that appear later in his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 14 in F minor, S242/R106, perhaps the most famous of his Hungarian Rhapsody cycle of 19 works, written in 1847.

Some of the melodies in the 14th Rhapsody come from Hungarian folk songs, such as ‘Magosan repül a daru’ (The Crane Flies High), which is used in the slow introduction, and the well-known ‘Koltó csárdás’ is used in the quick section, while others are of ‘uncertain origin’, and may, in fact have been written by Liszt himself.

In the case of the Fantasie über ungarische Volksmelodien (Fantasia on Hungarian Folk Melodies), S. 123. Liszt created a work for piano and orchestra that takes the earlier works for piano solo and transforms them into something greater. The piano ‘improvisations’ are set against a dancing orchestral backdrop that only serves to place them in greater contrast.

The work was dedicated to Hans von Bülow, one of his early students and eventual husband of his daughter Cosima (who later left von Bülow for Richard Wagner). The premiere was given in Pest, Hungary, on 1 June 1853, with von Bülow at the piano.

Fritz Leuchart: Hans von Bülow

This 1953 performance was recorded with Julian von Karolyi on the piano and Edmund Nick leading the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. The orchestra was founded in 1893 and was the orchestra for three important Mahler premieres: His symphonies nos. 4 and 8, and was where the posthumous premiere of Das Lied von der Erde, conducted by Bruno Walter, was given. Wilhelm Furtwängler made his conducting debut with the orchestra in 1908. Due to the loss of players, the orchestra ceased during WWII but was restarted by the city of Munich under new leadership and its current name. The leadership by Sergiu Celibidache from 1979 to 1996 restored the orchestra’s reputation and quality. Celibidache was succeeded by some of the leading conductors of the modern age: James Levine (1999–2004), Christian Thielemann (2004–2011), Lorin Maazel (2012–2014), and Valery Gergiev (2015–2022). In 2023, Israeli conductor Lahav Shandi was announced as chief conductor starting in the 2026–27 season.

Edmund Nick

Edmund Nick (1891–1874) was a German conductor, composer, and music critic. Although his degree was in law from the University of Graz in 1918, by 1919 he was working as an accompanist in Breslau. In 1933, he moved to Berlin and in 1945 to Munich, where he was a cabaret director and then, in 1947, chief conductor of the Bavarian State Opera. He was professor (1949) at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and from 1952–1956, was head of the music department of West German Radio, Cologne.

Julian von Karoly

Julian von Karolyi was a German-Hungarian pianist (1914–1993) who studied with Josef Pembaur, Jr., in Munich, Max von Pauer in Leipzig, Alfred Cortot in Paris, and Ernő Dohnányi in Budapest. He was known for his interpretations of Chopin and Liszt and made his debut recital in Berlin in 1934. He continued to perform throughout the war in Hungary, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia. After the war, he made his base in Munich and started a series of international tours through Europe, North and South America, and Asia.

Performed by

Julian von Karolyi
Edmund Nick
Orchestre Philharmonique de Munich

Recorded in 1953

Sir Stephen Hough: The Composer

by Georg Predota, Interlude

One of the most distinctive artists of his generation, Sir Stephen Hough combines an international career as a pianist with those of composer, writer, and painter. The first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2001), Hough is a true renaissance man, exceedingly gifted as a pianist, educator, writer, painter, and composer.

Sir Stephen Hough

While his achievements as a pianist are well-known and documented, Hough is also a respected author with four books and hundreds of articles to his name. In addition, a solo exhibition of his paintings was presented in London in 2012. It’s hardly surprising that The Economist included him in the list of “Twenty Living Polymaths.”

In addition, Hough is also a published and frequently commissioned composer, having crafted works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble, organ, harpsichord, and solo piano. He has received commissions from the Takács Quartet, the Cliburn, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, and the Gilmore Foundation, among many others. 

First Compositions

According to his father, Hough had memorised seventy nursery rhymes by the age of two. Be that as it may, singing was indeed his first form of musical expression, “especially as we had no classical music in my childhood home.” Hough sang hymns in primary school and church; later, he joined a choir in high school, and he joined the compulsory chorus at Julliard.

Hough started piano lessons at the age of six, and he began to compose at around the same time. He remembers writing a “Mass” in his teenage years, but Hough is generally dismissive of his juvenilia compositions. As he writes, “the Mass 

Transcriptions

Apparently, Hough composed a substantial number of works, but as he related in an interview, “mercifully, that pile of smudged sketches has disappeared.” These early efforts culminated in a viola sonata, the only early work that was actually published. However, for the next twenty odd years, Hough composed next to nothing, except an odd transcription or two. Hough related the story that after a recital in New York in the late 1990s, when he played his transcription of Rodger’s Carousel Waltz, he was chatting with the composer John Corigliano. 

Corigliano told Hough, “You should compose your own music. The only real difference between a transcription and writing your own pieces is using your themes rather than someone else’s.” This conversation became the starting point for a renewed engagement with compositions. Hough started to write little pieces for friends, and the bassoonist Graham Salvage from the Hallé Orchestra asked him to write a concerto. As Hough explained, “In a mad moment or reckless courage, I agreed to have a go and started sketching what eventually became The Loneliest Wilderness, my first serious piece in two decades.”

First Commissions

The Loneliest Wilderness was inspired by the poem “My Company” by Herbert Read (1893–1968), containing the following lines:

But, God! I know that I’ll stand
Someday in the loneliest wilderness,
Someday my heart will cry
For the soul that has been, but that now
Is scatter’d with the winds,
Deceased and devoid.

I know that I’ll wander with a cry:
‘O beautiful men, O men I loved,
O whither are you gone, my company?’

The work is based on two main musical ideas: the interval of a descending fourth and a rising chain of thirds. Introvert and restrained, this musical oration has a strong Jewish flavour to it, taking its inspiration from “the heart-breaking regret of an army officer as he looks back at the loss of the company of soldiers under his command.” 

Takács Quartet

Stephen Hough’s String Quartet No. 1

Dedicated to the Takács Quartet, Hough’s first string quartet premiered in December 2021. As it was commissioned as a companion piece to works by Ravel and Dutilleux, the composer set out to explore “not so much what united their musical language, but what was absent from them.” Although there are no quotes or direct references to the composers of Les Six, as captioned in the subtitle, the composer imagines unspecified places and memory where meetings might have taken place.

This string quartet “evokes a flavour more than a style,” according to Hough, “but a flavour rarely found in the music of Ravel and Dutilleux. In Les Six it’s not so much a lack of seriousness, although seeing life through a burlesque lens is one recurring ingredient; rather it’s an aesthetic re-view of the world after the catastrophe of the Great War. Composers like Poulenc and Milhaud were able to discover poignance in the rough and tumble of daily human life in a way which escaped the fastidiousness of those other two composers.”

Sonatas and Beyond

Stephen Hough’s Broken Branches

The term “Sonata” had a multiplicity of meanings over the years, but for Hough “it has kept its wordlessness and its seriousness; a sonata, regardless of form, is a statement of unity, if not uniformity.” And although the composer is wary of words or descriptions attached to them, he argues that “music is neither a thought nor an emotion nor a person, but very much its own entity. His sonata “Broken Branches,” is an oblique tribute to Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path, and a passage from Scripture: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Cut off from me you can do nothing.”

The sonata is constructed of sixteen small and inconclusive sections, like branches from a single tree. “Broken branches” functions in three ways; fragments of fragility, related in theme but incomplete and damaged.” The work seems to grow naturally out of Hough’s style of playing, and it opens with a “Prelude” and ends with a “Postlude” of identical music, but the anguish of the opening G-sharp minor becomes a glowing G major at the end. “Branches beginning life anew in a new spring.” The climax of this sonata is a section called “non credo,” based on “material from the Credo of my Missa Mirabilis, which explores issues of doubt and despair in the context of the concrete affirmations of the Nicene Creed.” 

A Statement of Faith

Stephen Hough joined the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 19, and he considered becoming a priest, in particular joining the Franciscan Order. Hough has extensively written about his homosexuality and its relationship with music and his religion. As he wrote, “Catholicism is still home for me. And despite everything, I haven’t found anything that suits me better.” Hough is attracted to the idea that Catholicism doesn’t emphasise rich and powerful people, but embraces poverty and simplicity. “Christianity celebrates what is ultimately important about being human—community, and concern for the widows, the prisoners, the prostitutes, people who are outcasts. I find that very attractive.”

The Missa Mirabilis is connected with a highly personal experience. Hough had been working on the piece for about one year when he had a serious car accident, overturning his car on the motorway at 80 mph. “I stepped out of the one untouched door in my completely mangled car,” he remembers, “with my Mass manuscript and my body intact, then wrote part of the “Agnus Dei” in St. Mary’s Hospital, waiting for four hours for a brain scan. I was conscious, as I was somersaulting with screeching metallic acrobatics on the M1, of feeling regret that I would never get to hear the music on which I’d been working so intensely in the days before. Someone had other ideas.” 

The Partita was commissioned by the Naumburg Foundation for Albert Cano Smit in 2019. As Hough explains, “composing four sonatas of a serious, intense character, I wanted to write something different – something brighter, something more celebratory, more nostalgic.” Scored in five movements, the outer movements “Overture” and “Toccata” are inspired by the world of a grand cathedral organ. The short three inner movements, “Capriccio,” and “Canción y Danza I & II,” are based on the interval of a fifth and partially represent an explicit homage to Federico Mompou.

Stephen Hough’s Fanfare Toccata

In 2002, Hough was commissioned to write a work for the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, performed by all 30 competitors. Hough took his inspiration from a variety of toccatas he had learned over the years, including Scarlatti, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff, Poulenc, Prokofiev and Samuel Barber. This inspiration accounted for the fanfare flourish complemented by a deeply romantic tune. It really does speak well of Hough’s composition that all 30 competitors have decided to make the Fanfare Toccata a part of their regular recital repertoire.

Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 • Volker Hartung • Cologne New Philharmonie

Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.2, originally written for solo piano comes to much life in its orchestral version in this fiery performance by the Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Volker Hartung. Recorded live at Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Germany

Let’s meet in the Rat hole! Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult

by Georg Predota  

“She was beautiful, very beautiful, a Lorelei: slender, of lofty bearing, enchantingly graceful and yet dignified in her movements, her head proudly raised, with an abundance of fair tresses, which waved over her shoulders like molten gold, a regular, classic profile, which stood in strange and interesting contrast with the modern breath of dreaminess and melancholy that was spread over her countenance; these were the general features which rendered it impossible to overlook her in the salon, the concert-room, or the opera-house, and these were enhanced by the choicest toilets, the elegance of which was surpassed by few, even in the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain.

Portrait of Marie d’Agoult by Henri Lehmann, 1843

That fantastic dreams were hidden behind the purity of her profile, and passion, burning passion, under the soft melancholy of her expression, was known to but a few, at the time that her connection with the young artist began.” The lady in question — described by the early Liszt biographer Lina Ramann — was none other than Marie Catherine Sophie d’Agoult. Born Marie Flavigy in Frankurt am Main, she was sent to Paris at the age of sixteen. Once she had finished her education at the Sacré Coeur, and after a torrid affair with the poet Alfred de Vigny, she married the Comte Charles d’Agoult in 1827. He was fifteen years her senior, an ill-mannered and hardly functioning war veteran, and love was simply not part of the equation. They did have two children, but by and large, they conducted an open marriage. That left Marie — who described herself as six inches of snow covering twenty feet of lava — with plenty of time to enjoy the sparkling gaiety of the salon. 

In early 1833, the Marquise Le Vayer invited Marie to sing in a women’s choir. The guest of honor was Franz Liszt. In her memoirs, Marie details this first encounter: “I use apparition because I can find no other word to describe the sensation aroused in me by the most extraordinary person I had ever seen. He was tall and extremely thin. His face was pale and his large sea-green eyes shone like a wave when the sunlight catches it. His expression bore the marks of suffering. He moved indecisively and seemed to glide across the room in a distraught way, like a phantom for whom the hour when it must return to the darkness is about to sound. Franz spoke with vivacity and with an originality that awoke a whole world slumbering in me. The voice of the young enchanter opened out before me a whole infinity, into which my thoughts were plunged and lost. Between us there was something at once very young and very serious, at once very profound and very serious.”

Marie was six years older than the young enchanter, and by the early summer of 1833 their affair was in full bloom. Liszt visited her in Croissy, and Marie came to Paris where they secretly met in a small apartment affectionately referred to as the “rat hole.” The chemistry was unmistakable, and by May 1833 she wrote, “Sometimes I love you foolishly, and in these moments I comprehend only that I could never be so absorbing a thought for you as you are for me.”

Franz Liszt, 1847

Liszt’s declaration of love was not far behind, and burning with desire he writes: “How ardent, how glowing on my lips is your last kiss! Marie, Marie, let me repeat that name a thousand times. It lives within me, burns me and threatens to consume me. I am not writing you; I am with you. Oh for an eternity in your arms. There is heaven and hell, and everything else, inside you, yes, inside you. Let me be wild and crazy. I am beyond help.” Concordantly, Liszt introduced himself to the public as a mature and original composer with his poetic Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and a set of three Apparitions. However, these early days of courtship did not run entirely smoothly. Some of the love letters he had written to Adèle de Laprunarède following their winter tryst in the Savoy came into Marie’s hands and sparked a violent jealous row. Although he pleaded with her to accept the letters as immature follies, Marie never really forgave him. In addition, Marie’s six-year-old daughter Louise fell ill, and within a couple of days died from massive inflammation of the brain.

It is unclear whether Marie considered this tragedy a punishment for her illicit affair with Franz, but in her state of depression and despair, in which she contemplated suicide, she refused to answer his calls or his letters. After nearly six months of being unable to see Marie, Franz wrote her a letter announcing his intention of leaving France, and expressing his desire to see her one last time. Marie relented and travelled to Paris for an emotional reunion in March of 1835. Blandine, their first daughter, was born nine months later.

Five of the Angriest Classical Music Feuds

 By Emily F. Hogstad, Interlude

Artistic types are famous for their big personalities and the beef and rivalries that result. Over the centuries, classical composers have had more than their fair share of tiffs. Today we’re looking at the stories and personalities behind five of the most famous feuds in classical music history.

Salieri v. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri © slavicwritings.com

Everyone who saw the 1984 movie “Amadeus” knows the story. Antonio Salieri was a mediocre composer who was blindingly jealous of his young and impish colleague, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In fury, he sabotages his career – and ultimately, his life.

That said… It’s not true. In real life, Salieri was a generally well-liked and well-regarded man, and a prolific and talented composer. He even taught Mozart’s son after Mozart died. And he didn’t poison Mozart.

The core of the legend came from letters that Mozart and his father wrote to each other in the 1780s, positing the existence of an “Italian cabal” that was seeking to block Mozart’s ascendance. The Mozart men were irritated that the Austrian court gave such prominence to the work of Italians; they believed that Austrian artists should reign supreme at court. This wider feud between Italian and Germanic styles of music persisted long after Mozart and Salieri, and perhaps consequentially, a rumor arose after their deaths that Salieri outright poisoned Mozart. So there was indeed a feud between the two composers, but it was a bit one-sided, and it wasn’t as dramatic – or deadly – as Hollywood suggests. 

Brahms v. Wagner

Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner © operalibera.net

After Beethoven’s revolutionary contributions to orchestral music, composers had to make tough decisions about how they would respond. Would they continue to embrace and refine the more instrumental-based genres that Beethoven had embraced, like the symphony or the sonata? Or would they throw out the old rule book and push forward to create new musical concepts and languages, as seen in program music? What genre would win the battle for cultural relevance: symphonies or operas?

This argument grew incredibly heated in the mid-1800s and became known (perhaps a bit melodramatically) as the War of the Romantics. Generally speaking, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert and Clara Schumann were seen as the “conservatives” in this struggle, while figures like Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner were seen as the “radicals.” A great deal of ink was spilled delineating the positions of the two camps. In the end, Wagner never wrote a symphony, and Brahms never wrote an opera.

Although their music was very different, Brahms appreciated at least some of Wagner’s music. “I’m the best of Wagnerians,” he told his friends in private. He even collected original Wagner manuscripts (much to Wagner’s irritation). That said, Brahms wasn’t such a fan of the loud extra-musical opinions that Wagner blared in various screeds and pamphlets.

Debussy v. Ravel

Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel © wfmt.com

The music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel is often jammed together on compilation discs with titles like “French Impressionism.” But just because the two men were writing music at the same time in the same city doesn’t mean they were best friends.

They met around 1900 when Debussy’s stepson Raoul Bardac, a classmate of Ravel’s, introduced them. Ravel was thirteen years younger and at a different stage of artistic and professional development than Debussy was, and Ravel admired the older man’s work intensely, to the point where he was criticized in the press for copying Debussy too closely.

In 1903, a hubbub arose when Debussy wrote a piece that seemed to be inspired by the Spanish-sounding strains in Ravel’s music. It was understandable for a younger man to copy an older one, the train of thought went, but should the older one be the composer copying the younger one? Then in 1913 the two – without knowing the other one was embarking on the same project – set some of Stéphane Mallarmé’s new poetry to music, before the poetry had been published. Their mutual distrust grew.

Another scandalous issue closer to home had caused the two composers to drift apart emotionally. Raoul Bardac introduced his (married) mother to (the married) Debussy…and the two fell in love and ran off together. Debussy’s first wife was left without a husband, and Ravel was one of the Parisians who made a financial contribution to her. The feud became official. 

Mendelssohn v. Liszt

Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn

We wrote an entire article about the rivalry between Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt! But to make a long story short, these two men got caught up in the War of the Romantics, just like Brahms and Wagner did. On a more personal note, Liszt once rewrote portions of Mendelssohn’s G-minor piano concerto, which understandably greatly irritated Mendelssohn. They also had an encounter at a salon gathering that could easily have turned into a disaster, when Liszt debuted yet another arrangement that he’d made of one of Mendelssohn’s work, the Capriccio, Op. 5…but Mendelssohn managed to smooth it over by joking afterward and congratulating Liszt on his extraordinary performance. 

Stravinsky v. Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, 1920 © History of Music Facebook Page

Stravinsky and Prokofiev are often mentioned in the same sentence simply because they both were Russian composers, born in 1882 and 1891 respectively. But just like in the case of Ravel and Debussy, that didn’t guarantee they got along.

Although Stravinsky once magnanimously praised Prokofiev’s ballet “Chout” as “the single piece of modern music [he] could listen to with pleasure”, the relationship eventually deteriorated. By the following year, when “Chout” was being run through for a possible revival, Stravinsky started an argument with Prokofiev, telling him he was wasting his time writing opera. The younger man retorted that Stravinsky “was in no position to lay down a general artistic direction” since Stravinsky himself “was not immune to error.”

Prokofiev later described what came next: Stravinsky “became incandescent with rage” and “we almost came to blows and were separated only with difficulty.”

Valentina Lisitsa plays Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

24,037,498 views

Valentina Lisitsa plays Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Recorded live on May 22th, 2010 in Leiden, Holland by von Aichberger & Roenneke GmbH Michael von Aichberger Dominik Roenneke Florian Breuer Michael Hohnstock Thanks to Alexei Kuznetsoff and Cum Laude Concerten, Leiden Michiel van Westering

Pianists and Their Composers: Franz Liszt

by Frances Wilson

Franz Liszt divides opinion. For some he is regarded as one of the greatest pianist-composers of the Romantic era; for others, he is a showman and a charlatan who wrote vulgar, showy music.

3D rendering of Franz Liszt by Hadi Karimi

In fact, he was a remarkable musician and human being. Sure, as a performer he could be flamboyant and extravagant in his gestures, but he helped shape the modern solo piano concert as we know it today and he also brought a great deal of music to the public realm through his transcriptions (he transcribed Beethoven’s symphonies for solo piano, thus making this repertoire accessible to both concert artists and amateur pianists to play at home). He was an advocate of new music and up-and-coming composers and lent his generous support to people like Richard Wagner (who married Liszt’s daughter Cosima).

His piano music combines technical virtuosity and emotional depth. It’s true that some of his output is showy – all virtuosic flourishes for the sake of virtuosity – but his suites such as the Années de Pèlerinage or the Transcendental Etudes, and his transcriptions of Schubert songs demonstrate the absolute apogee of art, poetry, and beauty combined.

Martha Argerich

Martha Argerich

Martha Argerich brings fire and fluency to her interpretations, underpinned by a remarkable technical assuredness. Her 1972 recording of the B-minor Sonata and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 is regarded as “legendary”.

Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard

Australian Leslie Howard is the only pianist to have recorded the solo piano music of Liszt, a project which includes some 300 premiere recordings, and he is rightly regarded as a specialist of this repertoire who has brought much of Liszt’s lesser-known music to the fore. 

Lazar Berman

Lazar Berman

Berman’s 1977 recording of the Années de Pèlerinage remains the benchmark recording of this repertoire for many. Berman brings sensibility and grandeur, warm-heartedness, and mastery to this remarkable set of pieces. 

Alim Beisembayev

Alim Beisembayev

Winner of the 2021 Leeds International Piano Competition, the young Armenian pianist Alim Beisembayev’s debut recording of the complete Transcendental Etudes is remarkable for its spellbinding polish, precision, and musical maturity, all supported by superb technique. 

Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang has been praised for her breath-taking interpretations of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto which combine force and filigree, emotional depth, and technical mastery to create thrilling and insightful performances. 

Other noted Liszt pianists include Georges Cziffra, Jorge Bolet, Krystian Zimerman, Lang Lang, Daniil Trifonov, Sviatoslav Richter, Marc-André Hamelin, Nelson Freire, Claudio Arrau, and Vladimir Horowitz.

Liszt - Etude - Un Sospiro

Franz Liszt - Liebestraum - Love Dream

35,170,646 views Oct 24, 2008

Liebesträume is a set of three solo piano works (S.541/R.211) by Franz Liszt, published in 1850.

Christmas Piano Music

By Frances Wilson, Interlude

With Christmas just around the corner, here is a selection of festive piano music to bring good cheer and warmth, peace and joy.

© Garry Gay

J.S. Bach: Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (arr. Myra Hess)

Myra Hess

Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring is the English title of the 10th movement from Bach’s cantata “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben,” BWV 147. The British pianist Myra Hess published her transcription for solo piano in 1926 and later followed it with a version of piano 4-hands. Its simple elegance is underpinned by a resonant bass line which brings grandeur to one of Bach’s most enduring and popular works. 

Percy Grainger: Sussex Mummer’s Carol

Percy Grainger

Percy Grainger had an avid interest in British folk songs and was a key figure in the folksong revival movement at the turn of the twentieth century. He made many wonderful transcriptions of folksongs from the British Isles, through which he introduced these pieces to concert audiences. The Sussex Mummers’ Carol is known to have been sung in the English county of Sussex as early as the 1800s and possibly even earlier (“mummers” were players who would go round villages re-enacting Biblical stories and folk tales for the local people). Grainger’s refined and peaceful transcription is a world away from the original setting in which a carol like this would be performed. Here, he demonstrates his skill in elevating a rustic tune into a concert miniature. 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: December – Noel from The Seasons

Tchaikovsky composed his twelve character pieces for piano, The Seasons, at the same time as he was writing his popular ballet, Swan Lake. December: Noel is scored in warm A-flat major and opens with a sweetly decorated melody. The piece evokes the good cheer and antics of Christmas.

Franz Liszt: Weihnachtsbaum (Christmas Tree)

Composed in 1873-76, Franz Liszt’s suite of 12 miniatures for piano was dedicated to the composer’s first grandchild, Daniela von Bülow (1860-1940; daughter of Cosima and Hans von Bülow). While some of the pieces directly reference well-known Christmas carols, including In Dulce Jubilo (No. 3) and Adeste Fideles (O Comes All Ye Faithful; No. 4), or evoke Christmas bells Chimes (No. 6), others are not connected with Christmas at all. The overall style and mood of the suite is reminiscent of Schumann’s Kinderszenen. The first recording of Weinachtsbaum was made in 1951 by Alfred Brendel. 

Julian Yu: Jangled Bells

A witty, off-key take on that evergreen Christmas song by Chinese-Australian composer Julian Yu. After suggesting the well-known tune in the opening the music descends into a discordant middle section before the melody returns. The entire piece lasts just under 1 minute!

Leroy Anderson: Sleigh Ride (arr. Andrew Gentile)

Leroy Anderson

Composer Leroy Anderson had the original idea for Sleigh Ride during a heatwave! The work was completed in February 1948. Andrew Gentile’s dazzlingly imaginative transcription for solo piano is a masterpiece of virtuosity, complete with Lisztian flourishes and glittering glissandi, while honouring Anderson’s orchestral original. No Christmas playlist should be without this joyful, uplifting piece!