Hyperion Records

Liszt’s instant enthusiasm upon first encountering the music of Berlioz was immediately turned to practical account and, indeed, some of Liszt’s transcriptions, made often to bring the music to audiences whose local orchestras just couldn’t play it, were published before the original scores. Aside from the operatic transcription from Benvenuto Cellini, the Symphonie fantastique and the Harold en Italie (with viola), these works represent all the Berlioz pieces which Liszt transcribed or, in the case of the Idée fixe, composed. Perhaps fearing that the melody which holds together the Symphonie fantastique was too long for the memory of the average music lover, Liszt made a delectable nocturne from it—a sort of propaganda piece—but very beautiful in its own right. (It is also incorrectly listed in The New Grove under its subtitle as an original Liszt piece! Some sources list a version from 1833, but it seems that the 1846 piece, published by 1847 at the latest, is the first version. A later, simplified version was made as an introduction to the independently-issued March au Supplice from the Symphonie fantastique.)

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1989