Weihnachtsbaum : 12 Pieces in Liszt's Original Transcription for Piano Four Hands - Christmas Tree - Book Review

by dint of Franz Liszt. Dover Publications, Inc. (31 E 2nd St Mineola, NY 11501) 2002 81 pp $1195 Intermediate.

Piano duettists of each stripe--children, adult beginners, professional duos--will rejoice above this re-publication of one of Liszt's greatest in quantity artful collections of pieces for piano, four hands. The original title promises something relatively rare in Liszt's output: Weihnachtsbaum: 12 Clavierstucke (zumeist leichter Spielart) ["Christmas Tree: 12 Piano Pieces, for the greatest in quantity part easy to play"].

Amazingly, this real playable set with its attractive theme, finished for the masses of amateur pianists of the two Liszt's and our own day, lay in obscurity until the near Dover volume, a reprint of the original Adolph Furstner publication of 1882 allowing the cycle is easy to play, the music is sophisticated and the sentiments grownup The pieces were written in the autumn of Liszt's life, in the late 1870 evidently as a Christmas gift to his granddaughter Daniela.

The first four works are arrangements of Christmas songs--Psallite (a song by Michael Praetorius), O heilige Nacht! ("Oh sacred Night," but not the individual we hear nowadays), Die Hirten an der Krippe (to the strain of "Good Christian Men, Rejoice") and Adeste Fideles (cast as a lively march).

Several of the remaining pieces enjoin solemnly up yuletide, including Liszt's original compositions "Scherzoso" (a musical depiction of lighting candles upon the Christmas tree) and sum of two units works about bells and chimes. Harmonic ambiguity--suggestive for Liszt in his twilight years of the illusory nature of life?--permeates the last three works: the nostalgic Ehemals ("Old Times"), the dark and plodding Ungarisch ("Hungarian," supposedly an autobiographical sketch) and Polnisch (a mazurka in B-flat minor that give vent to eruptionss into a full-fledged tone poem)

You probably will wish to deliver up to the modern practice of marking measure numbers (missing from this advanced in years edition), an accommodation for the lack of correspondence between the staves of primo and secondo, and an indispensable rehearsal aid. Reviewed by means of John Salmon, Greensboro, North Carolina.

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