Records
Paradise unnamed
Peter Phillips
The re-issue of the 1981 Leipzig Gewandhaus / Kurt Masur recordings of the two symphonies of Franz Liszt (EMI 29 0732 1 and 2) brings to mind the uncertain status of these pieces in the composer's reputation. One cannot help wondering whether they would not be more popular if they were simply called numbers One and Two, like his piano concertos, with no more said, rather than 'Dante' and 'Faust' with endless qualifications about whether they are not more like instrumental tab- leaux than anything else. Even so, their lack of exposure, especially just now, is confusing since they contain some most beautiful music, quintessentially Romantic and amongst Liszt's most confident orches- tral compositions. To judge from all that one has heard on the radio and in the concert hall so far this year, the world still likes to remember Liszt as the virtuoso pianist through his fiendishly difficult keyboard compositions. There's a great deal to be said for this view in many ways — like ignoring his tiresome church music — but the symphonies in particular deserve some rehabilitation.
This desert is squarely founded on musical grounds; but the works also have a special appeal to the modern realist for the light that they throw on the processes of Romantic thought. Did Liszt ever fully admit to himself that when he wrote his musical sketch of Faust in the first move- ment of the eponymous symphony, he was describing himself? Or did he notice that when he wrote the 'Gretchen' second movement of the same piece, remarkable for its innocent delicacy, he was not por- traying Goethe's character, but. treating himself to an idealised description of women as he always hoped to find them? And why did he baulk at the task of finishing the 'Dante' symphony with a movement dedicated to Paradiso, having tackled the Inferno and Purgatorio? In fact both Liszt and Wagner instinctively felt that it was impossible to express the state of heaven in music, as the preface to the original score makes clear: 'Art cannot portray heaven itself, only the image of this heaven in the hearts of those souls which have turned to the light of heavenly grace.' Which in the context of this symphony means that the Purgatorio movement be- comes a kind of prelude to heaven, an intimation of eternal bliss rather than a neighbour to horror. In effect Liszt did describe paradise in this movement, but somehow it didn't do to admit it. Compos- ers from other centuries have been less high-minded: the 16th-century repertoire is fair groaning with representations of para- dise (though not so stocked with ones of hell), and while 20th-century composers have been detectably circumspect about the whole idea, the 'In paradisum' move- ment of Faure's Requiem takes a lot of beating. What one might call the precious- ness in Liszt's feelings is perhaps most perfectly set in relief by this observation from Sir Thomas Browne, written in the 1630s: For even that vulgar and Taverne Musicke, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first Compos- er, there is something in it of Divinity more than the eare discovers. It is an Hieroglyphi- call and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and Creatures of God, such a melody to the eare, as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In briefe, it is a sensible fit of that Harmony, which intellectually sounds in the cares of God.
All of which is romantic enough; but not Romantic.
In the end, as we all know from listening to Wagner and Berlioz, any music that is worth bothering with will transcend the circumstances and theories that produced it. Instead of a Paradiso, Liszt ended the `Dante' symphony with a setting of the Magnificat, which, like his Purgatorio, is an unnamed slice of heaven. It is scored for high voices, because then, as ever, heaven meant altitude, and even includes one of the Gregorian melodies for this canticle. The result is moving, losing nothing by being sung by boys on the Masur record- ing (the Thomanerchor of Leipzig), even though Liszt originally had women in mind. Strangely these two discs from Masur form one of only two recordings of Liszt's symphonies complete. The other is from James Conlon with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. There is only one further version of the 'Dante' currently in the catalogue; though there are four more of the 'Faust', including a fiery new per- formance this month from Solti and the Chicago SO. If you come to enjoy Masur and the Leipzig Orchestra's handling of these pieces, you should also try EMI 29 0730 1, which contains their interpretation of several of Liszt's most famous sympho- nic poems.
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