Hyperion Records

Ah, vous dirai-je, maman is apparently Liszt's only use of this popular tune. The Pressburg leaf is a melody from the Grande Valse de bravoure, whilst the Vienna leaf is a melody from the Valse mélancolique – and thanks are due to Dr. Mária Eckhardt for making it available. The Leipzig leaf is unknown from other sources, but the beginning of the Exeter Preludio is instantly recognizable as the introduction to the Petite valse favorite. The Detmold piece is also an unknown theme; the Magyar theme we know from the tenth of the Magyar Dalok, and the leaf on the Rákóczi-Marsch is but a further example of a real obsession. The E major piece of 1843 is unknown from elsewhere, but the A flat piece is again the main theme of the first Ballade. The Lyon Prélude was a favourite of Liszt's, containing, as it does, a little flourish which includes all twelve notes of the chromatic scale in tonal ambiguity – he wrote this fragment on several other occasions; the long-sought Prélude omnitonique which follows turned out not to be a missing work so much as another flourish through all the notes of the chromatic scale, in a chord sequence that allows the bass to proceed in a whole-tone scale – the passage is familiar from the tenth of the Études d'exécution transcendante – and on this occasion there is no resolution. The Leipzig leaf of 1840 is a further theme from the Valse mélancolique; the Berlin Preludio adds a splendid cadence into C major to the Prélude omnitonique, whilst the Braunschweig Preludio takes the same material into F sharp major. The little Serenade is kin to Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, and the Andante religioso, of which there are at least two examples extant, is an extended quotation from the early Harmonies poétiques et religieuses.

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1999