When one thinks of virtuosity, the first name that comes to mind is Franz Liszt. Instead of re-examining Liszt's image as the greatest virtuoso pianist that ever lived, Liszt and Virtuosity treats virtuosity as a ‘musical concept’ (p. viii). The book's editor further argues that Liszt's ‘more essential contribution to the history of virtuosity is compositional’ (p. viii).
This collection of 11 essays developed out of the conference ‘Liszt and Virtuosity – an International Symposium’ held at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in 2017. The purpose of the conference was to discuss Liszt's complex virtuosity from different perspectives, such as audience reception, music theory and analysis, performance practice and musicology. The book brings together these insights by the world's most important Liszt's scholars and performers (excluding some who had other commitments).
Robert Doran's Introduction discusses the important themes that appear in the subsequent chapters, including how the evolution of pianos shaped virtuosity, and virtuosity's association with difficulty. Following the Introduction, the book's essays are divided into three sections, the first of which, with five essays, is devoted to ‘how Lisztian virtuosity relates to performance practices’ (p. vii). This includes Liszt's technique and teaching of his earlier years, the role of pianos and the idea of compositional virtuosity. The three essays of the second part are concerned with theoretical or conceptual aspects of virtuosity as ‘manifested in Liszt's example’ (p. vii), and the three essays of Part Three propose alternative approaches to virtuosity in Liszt's late compositional style; these essays are more musically analytical than those in the other parts.
‘Liszt, Virtuosity, and Performance’ begins with Kenneth Hamilton's essay ‘Après une Lecture de Czerny? Liszt's Creative Virtuosity’. Hamilton shows the impact earlier brilliant works had on Liszt's compositions and proposes that Liszt's starting point was his improvisations on pre-existing melodies: he then transformed his ‘virtuoso recreations in concert … to his own original works’ (p. 42). This does not raise questions of originality, but instead shows that a creation ‘begins with recreation’ (p. 72). Interestingly, towards the end of his essay Hamilton discusses Liszt's sarcastic response ‘Yes! Yes. The sonata [in B minor] is all stolen’ (p. 83) and explains that he played it from the score so it would not be considered as an improvisation. This anecdote shows how Liszt found inspiration in the works of others and indirectly highlights the importance and role of improvisation of those themes for Liszt's conception of originality and re-creation. Hamilton further shows how this transformation of music was an ongoing progress during Liszt's life; as Liszt's virtuosity evolved, he revised his earlier music and adapted it to his style of the time.
In Chapter 2, ‘Transforming Virtuosity’, Olivia Sham shares insights gained by playing Liszt's music on historical pianos. She argues that the instrument's evolution caused changes in Liszt's compositional style, which are reflected in works with many different revisions. Sham uses the last version of the Wilde Jagd S. 139/8 to show that Liszt's transformations could not have been performed on earlier instruments because those pianos were not as developed to support the great power that was required in his newer revisions. This demonstrates what Hamilton had previously argued, that creations began with re-creations, even of one's own music.
In the following chapter, ‘Spirit and Mechanism: Liszt's Early Piano Technique and Teaching’, Nicolas Dufetel proposes that Liszt's draftbooks are important in understanding Liszt's ‘approach to piano playing and teaching’ (p. 121). Dufetel looks at Liszt's technique from a fresh perspective and, instead of linking it to the piano's evolution, he shows that starting in the 1830s, Liszt's technique became a balance of practice with mindfulness; that Liszt was a thinker, and it was the development of his spirit – his mind – that influenced his technique, not just mechanical practice. Using Valérie Boissier's notes during her lessons with Liszt, Dufetel also gives a different perspective of Liszt's teaching by comparing his later method with earlier sources, such as Liszt's Technische Studien. The connection to the development of Liszt's spiritual thought is intriguing and raises further questions about Liszt's intellectual process.
In Chapter 4, ‘Paths through the Lisztian Ossia’, Jonathan Kregor raises a ‘complex situation … unique to Liszt and his music’ (p. 153): the abundance of ossia passages in his compositions and the avoidance of their performance because of the lack of difficulty. As Kregor points out, today ossias are considered the easier, non-virtuosic alternative passages. Yet as he shows, some ossias challenge their purpose by differing extremely from the original and also by being technically demanding. Kregor raises questions of Liszt's own motives and how performers are supposed to choose. He argues that ossias must be considered as an ‘inseparable component’ and not as inferior (p. 170). But thus far, the choice of ossias for public concerts has been met with resistance by performers and audiences because they are considered easier. As David Keep shows in the next chapter, both musicians and audience have understood virtuosity as overcoming great difficulty with advanced skills. This definition of virtuosity does not account for easier passages, which Keep argues have their own compositional virtuosity.
Keep's essay, ‘Brahms “versus” Liszt. The Internalization of Virtuosity’, concludes Part One. In discussing Brahms's approach to virtuosity Keep hopes that ‘we may be able to refine our sense of virtuosity's range of application, at least in an aesthetic and conceptual sense’ (p. 189). Based on his own experience as a pianist, Keep shows that in Brahms's compositions there is an ‘internalization’ of virtuosity which is found in the musical text per se. As he explains, Brahms's music is not regarded as virtuosic because, in contrast to Liszt's music, it does not require extravagant technical skills. He calls Jim Samson's discussion of virtuosity in Virtuosity and the Musical Work (Cambridge, 2007) ‘externalization’ (Samson revisits his approach in the following chapter). Keep raises interesting questions which are linked to the listener's reception and perception of virtuosity through the musical text. As he proposes and shows through music examples, there is a different type of virtuosity which is written by the composer and does not serve the purpose of display. This is done through specific composed features, idioms and structures. This complexity, and as he calls it, the internalized virtuosity, puts ‘weight upon the listener's ability to absorb dense music’ (p. 196). Both listeners and performers are engaged in the music in order to comprehend the text's density. It is a very motivating essay which is just the beginning in refining our sense of virtuosity. However, how can the contemporary listener's understanding be refined in order to appreciate the internalized virtuosity and not only expect an external projection of technical skills?
Continuing from the previous essay, the second part of the book, ‘Lisztian Virtuosity: Theoretical Approaches’, begins with Jim Samson's chapter: ‘The Practice of Pianism: Virtuosity and Oral History’. Here, Samson revisits his Virtuosity and The Musical Work and shows how different approaches may result in different solutions. During the 13 years since his book was published, Samson has become convinced of the importance of epic and oral traditions. He now favours a focus on performance practice rather than musical materials. He argues, ‘if we truly accepted that the composer does not hold a monopoly over signification, we would surely allow performers a much stronger claim on our reading of history’ (p. 228). It is a challenging short essay that critiques approaches to virtuosity and the composition per se. Samson acknowledges his new stance needs further elaboration and explanation.
Jonathan Dunsby's musical analysis offers compelling insights in ‘Liszt's Symbiosis: The Question of Virtuosity and the Concerto Arrangement of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy’. He justifies Liszt's approach to modifications of Schubert's Fantasie in C major op.15 (D. 760), suggesting that Liszt basically transferred Schubert's virtuosity to the public stage, as Schubert had ‘failed’ to do so (p. 261). He concludes that the Wanderer Concerto was a ‘symbiosis [sic], a re-energization of Schubert's modernist virtuosity’ (p. 243). Dunsby suspects, and I agree, that ‘the real Schubert-lover’ is not fond of Liszt's lied arrangements (p. 241). Liszt's versions are too contrasting to the original, making one sceptical not only of Liszt's modifications, but also to the claim that Schubert would have adopted those modifications himself (as Dunsby speculates, see p. 250). Liszt modified Schubert's music in the same way he revised his own: he updated the Fantasy ‘for the more recent piano’ and ‘remove[d] some of the features that he seems to have considered to be egregiously taxing for the pianist’ (p. 243). Revising music of other composers is not the same as revising his own compositions, though: Dunsby asks ‘whether Liszt has implicitly approved … of Schubert's virtuosity or consistently sought to improve, update, or enhance that virtuosity’ (p. 250). Asking such questions indeed sheds new light on passages where Liszt kept Schubert's piano style. Contradictorily, Dunsby argues that arranging Schubert's lieder acted as ‘a vehicle for Liszt's own keyboard virtuosity’ (p. 239) and thus, there was a symbiosis which enhanced ‘Liszt's own mission to create pianism of a virtuosity … which had never been heard before: “transcendental” virtuosity’ (p. 261). That resulted in Schubert's music becoming ‘comprehensible only through Liszt's own playing’, because Liszt defined him as an ‘unknown and misunderstood composer’ (p. 261). Because the modified passages were ‘so effective’, Dunsby wonders whether Liszt ‘has discerned and realized something that was in Schubert's mind all along’ (p. 260). However, it would have been impossible even for Liszt to know for sure. For Dunsby, if this is a ‘reasonable critical speculation’ it would give a ‘deeper meaning to the idea of a symbiotic relationship’ (p. 260). What are the criteria though in accepting such a speculation? Is it really a symbiosis, since Schubert was not alive to consent to those modifications?
Chapter 8 concludes the second part of the book and is by the editor, Robert Doran: ‘From the Brilliant Style to the Bravura Style: Reconceptualizing Lisztian Virtuosity’. The chapter is informative and useful for understanding the different uses of ‘brilliant’, ‘bravura’ and also con bravura. Apart from historically locating their use and purpose by different nineteenth-century composers, Doran contextualises their use within Liszt's music, and shows how his strategies differed, for instance in contrast to Chopin. In the second section of the chapter, ‘Bravura versus Brillante’, the author defines brillante as ‘a category of musical style (stile brillante)’ between 1810 and 1830, ‘a kind of interregnum between classicism and Romanticism’ (p. 271). Later, in the section on ‘Liszt's Dialectical Virtuosity’, he adds that ‘bravura virtuosity’ differed from that of Hummel, Czerny and Weber in the 1820s (p. 290). This discussion, if not the whole section, would have worked better for the reader at the beginning of the chapter. Were those specific years an interregnum, or a different school of virtuosity that linked classicism to romanticism? As Doran notices, in the 1830s the brilliant-style virtuosity ‘gives way to the new bravura style of Thalberg and Liszt’ (p. 269). The author sees the ‘dichotomy between the brilliant and bravura styles as mapping onto the beautiful/sublime contrast’ (p. 279) and distinguishes it from earlier bravura virtuosity.
In Part Three of the book, ‘Virtuosity and Anti-virtuosity in “Late Liszt”’, virtuosity is described successively as a mechanism of expression, as anti-virtuosic and as late virtuosity. Chapter 9 is by Dolores Pesce: ‘Harmony, Gesture, and Virtuosity in Liszt's Revisions: Shaping the affective Journeys of the Cypress Pieces from Années de pèlerinage 3’. The title encapsulates the topic; the author also clearly states the purpose and aim of the essay, which make it very comprehensible to the reader, even if they are not familiar with the Cypress Pieces. Pesce ‘offers an in-depth interpretation’ of Aux cyprès de la Villa d'Este 1 and 2. (p. 311) in which virtuosity is explored as a ‘vehicle for expression’ (p. 312) instead of demanding technical skills through ‘virtuosic sonic keyboard explorations’ (p. 314). Pesce shows how Liszt shaped his ideas of expression, such as grief and lament, through ‘virtuosic textures … with musical topics and more general expressive devices’ (p. 314). Through Liszt's revisions and her own interpretation, she demonstrates how Liszt's final revisions of the two Cypress Pieces are ‘understood in terms of an affective journey’ – of ‘what Liszt's music expresses’ (p. 312–13).
In Chapter 10, ‘Anti-Virtuosity and Musical Experimentalism’, Ralph P. Locke explores the emotional and environmental aspect within Liszt's late compositional writing as being ‘anti-virtuosic’. He proposes some characteristics of what he calls ‘anti-virtuosity’ and contextualises three similar ‘strange-sounding pieces’ (p. 370) – which are all related to nature – by Liszt, Debussy and Marie Jaëll. Although he is ‘not claiming any relation of influence’ between the three pieces (p. 347), Locke later writes that there is evidence for a ‘fairly direct influence’ (p. 361) of Liszt's piece on Jaëll's, and the resemblances are ‘not coincidental’ (p. 370). Locke brings new insights to current scholarship about Jaëll and her relationship with Liszt.
The book ends with ‘Virtuosity in Liszt's Late Piano Works’ by Shay Loya. As has been previously argued, virtuosity is not just a technicality and in Liszt's late style, it is harmony that is noteworthy. Loya introduces a new path to responding to Liszt's late virtuosity. He does not analyse his music but instead proposes ways that one may think about Liszt's late style and how it transformed his music. The author argues that in his revision Liszt aimed ‘to remove virtuosity as a distraction from the value of the works as compositions’ (p. 389). In his discussion of Liszt's ‘modernist rehabilitation’, Loya wonders whether there is ‘such a thing as “late virtuosity”’ (p. 392). Because Liszt's earlier style is very contrasting to his late style, Loya questions how virtuosity or ‘its absence’ influenced his late music (p. 401). Was it really an absence of virtuosity, though, or of difficulty? Approaching Liszt's style and music from different perspectives complicates further the comprehension of virtuosity. Why is virtuosity generally understood only as the execution of extremely difficult passages? As the different chapters in the book have argued, there are different types of virtuosity throughout each different phase of composition-performance. Each composition demands a different type of virtuosity and, to borrow Dunsby's term, it is the symbiosis of the composer and performer that determines the exact virtuosity type.
The essays of this book deepen our understanding of the concept of virtuosity and of different approaches. Some essays require previous knowledge of the source described to be fully comprehended. As a collection, the book re-evaluates virtuosity, specifically its given definitions and practices, through Liszt's own understanding in connection to his contemporaries. However, the topic of audience reception is not addressed much, and it could have enhanced further the conception of virtuosity. The question to what extent something is virtuosic when the external difficulty is not so visual has been raised in a similar vein by few authors. Could this feature be called something different? Is there more than one virtuosity? Some chapters hint, indirectly and directly, that indeed there are different conceptions of the term. One must also consider, though, that virtuosity and its definition as having a specific level of difficulty was comprehended differently not only by composers and performers but also by the audience when a work was first heard, even though today's audiences expect technical demanding works. There was a mutual collaboration between audiences, composers and performers for the conception and definition of virtuosity.
