Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Franz Liszt - Die Lorelei, S532
Performer: Rudolph Ganz
Heine’s Die Lorelei tells the familiar story of the siren-like witch who haunts a rock in the river Rhine—Liszt’s dramatic setting (in either version) is vastly superior to the tawdry little Silcher version beloved of amateur children’s choruses, but the revised version is more subtle, less four-square, and there may even be a deliberate hint of the Tristan prelude in the introduction.
Franz Liszt - Die Lorelei, S532
Performer: Rudolph Ganz
Heine’s Die Lorelei tells the familiar story of the siren-like witch who haunts a rock in the river Rhine—Liszt’s dramatic setting (in either version) is vastly superior to the tawdry little Silcher version beloved of amateur children’s choruses, but the revised version is more subtle, less four-square, and there may even be a deliberate hint of the Tristan prelude in the introduction.
![Franz Liszt - La lugubre gondola, S200
Franz Liszt - Die Trauergondel – La lugubre gondola, S200
Performer: Arnaldo Cohen, Leslie Howard
Thanks to the splendid detective work of Professoressa Rossana Dalmonte (Istituto Liszt, Bologna), Liszt scholars have had to take another look at the provenance and history of the most famous of Liszt’s late compositions: La lugubre gondola. We can now establish a clear chronology of the piece, and the present version transpires to be the original conception, composed while Liszt was staying with Wagner at the Palazzo Vendramin on the Grand Canal in Venice in December 1882, a piece which Liszt later described as having been written as if under a premonition of Wagner’s death and funeral (Wagner died at the Vendramin in March 1883). The only version of the work published during Liszt’s lifetime is a revision of this manuscript issued by Fritzsch in 1885, known since 1927 as La lugubre gondola II, because in that year Breitkopf & Härtel published it alongside another work with the same title, known as La lugubre gondola I – an erroneous order of chronology. In August 1998, at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatorium in Venice, Rossana Dalmonte found two autograph manuscripts of La lugubre gondola (cf A and B below) which permit the establishment with reasonable precision of the following chronology: A 1882, December: Die Trauer-Gondel – La Lugubre Gondola, for pianoforte, in 44 [first version], the piece in the present recording (S199a); B 1883, January: La Lugubre Gondola, for pianoforte, in 44 [second version], the text which, with minimal alteration, constituted the basis of the 1885 edition (S200/2); C circa 1883: La lugubre gondola, transcription for violin or cello and piano from the version B above (S134), with twenty bars added in place of the last three at a later moment (but probably before the publication of B, since it lacks the final changes to the original text); D circa 1884–5: La lugubre gondola, for pianoforte in 68, the so-called La lugubre gondola I. Franz Liszt - La lugubre gondola, S200](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3jPaTau4BBo/mqdefault.jpg)






![Franz Liszt - Grande Fantaisie sur des thèmes de Paganini, S700
Franz Liszt - Grande Fantaisie sur des thèmes de Paganini, S700
0:00-Grande Fantaisie (Variations) sur des thèmes de Paganini La Clochette et Le Carnaval de Venise, S700i
14:28-Grande Fantaisie (Variations) sur des thèmes de Paganini, S700ii
Performer: Leslie Howard
The two versions of a Grande Fantaisie sur des thèmes de Paganini (D Q], E] are contained within one manuscript, which was completed in Lisbon in 1845 and is presently in Weimar. The work was published in 1989, edited by the excellent Imre Mezó. A few textual observations: first, the manuscript is untitled, but the clear connection of the work with the Clochette fantasy seems to warrant a similar title rather than the Variations suggested by Editio Musica Budapest(EMB); secondly, the first version of the ending can only be properly reconstructed if some pages of crossed-out material are included from the manuscript - the EMB solution of printing just what was not crossed out does not work, because it no longer connects at the point of its insertion; thirdly, EMBs bar 139 should not be included - it is part of a partially crossed-out group of bars which have been replaced on the adjacent systems; fourthly, the missing bars 454- 463 of the second version can be supplied by repeating bars 284-290 rather than by composing some other variant of the Clochette theme; and lastly, the second versions final chords can be supplied from the undeleted ending of the first version. Franz Liszt - Grande Fantaisie sur des thèmes de Paganini, S700](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6dsg6ONyTfs/mqdefault.jpg)


