Hyperion Records

Liszt’s works on themes from Donizetti’s operas have experienced an uneven fate: the Lucia Sextet has never left the repertoire, the Lucia et Parisina Waltz turns up from time to time, as does the Lucia March and Cavatina. The horrendously difficult Lucrezia Borgia pieces are admired at a safe distance, while the trenchant Dom Sébastien Funeral March—which draws in several other themes from the opera and certainly lightens in atmosphere before the end—is a rarity. The Favorite transcription, which appears to date from shortly after the opera’s première, has remained in manuscript and will appear in the facsimile of a handwritten copy in the 1992 Liszt Society Journal. We know nothing of the background to the piece, but it must rank among the most simple and beautiful elaborations of a great melody. (The work does not appear in the present edition of the Searle/Winklhofer catalogue, but the present writer has assigned it S400a for convenience, pending the publication of a new catalogue.)

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1992