Hyperion Records

The Soirées de Vienne addressed such a real need and an obvious difficulty that their present neglect is quite shameful. Schubert produced several hundreds of short dance pieces for piano, many of them in sets which were possibly intended for continuous dancing or domestic entertainment but which are, because of their individual brevity, the sameness of their length, and their often unvaried tonality, very awkward to programme in concert. For the same reason the few surviving dance sets for piano by Mozart and Beethoven are largely ignored by recitalists. But these dances contain a wealth of delightful music which, as Liszt perceived from the beginning with his customary astuteness, requires rescuing and assorting with discreet habiliments for public use. Liszt concocted continuous suites from selected dances, often making a better point than Schubert did of the sheer originality of them by the use of contrasting tonality, and from time to time allowing himself the occasional variation, introduction, interlude or coda. Schubert’s sometimes rather rudimentary style of piano writing is generously and touchingly filled out without the slightest recourse to the applause-gathering trickery to which many a nineteenth-century piano waltz falls victim. These refined waltz sequences laid the ground for the structures of some of the most memorable of the Strauss waltzes, and find echoes as late as Prokofiev. The adventures of the various dances are easily followed and, for the comfort of the searchers amongst the available sources, Schubert’s original themes are identified in each work in the order in which Liszt has them appear.

In all, Liszt uses thirty-five Schubert dances from seven different sets. No 1 of these nine Valses-Caprices is based upon three, No 2 upon six (with an extra theme at the coda of Liszt’s own devising, but most Schubertian nonetheless), No 3 upon seven themes (the fifth of which combines two to make one), Nos 4 and 5 upon just two apiece, Nos 6 and 7 each upon three, No 8 upon seven, and No 9, which is a piece apart, upon just one. No 9 is really an original set of variations with an introduction and coda upon the so-called Trauerwalzer from Schubert’s Op 9, and if Liszt had not called it a transcription it would have found its way into the canon of his original works without question. The shape of the set overall presents two groups of three where a more extrovert work with introduction and coda follows two intimate pieces which concentrate upon gentle, lyric pieces, then a contrasting pair, the second of which is the grandest of the whole collection, and finally the delicate pendant of the variations in No 9. Liszt aficionados will recall that the second theme of No 4 had already appeared in the third of the Apparitions (see Volume 26 of this series) – so Liszt clearly knew these dances by 1834 at the latest – and the first theme of that piece is introduced with a gesture obviously intended to show a relationship with Beethoven’s Sonata, Op 31 No 3. No 6 of the Soirées de Vienne was a great favourite in Liszt’s day and was much recorded earlier in the twentieth century.

Liszt uses themes from the following Schubert collections:

Zwölf Walzer, siebzehn Ländler und neun Ecossaisen, Op 18/D145
Sechsunddreizig Originaltänze (‘Erste Walzer’), Op 9/D365
Sechzehn Ländler und zwei Ecossaisen, Op 67/D734
Vierunddreizig Valses sentimentales, Op 50/D779
Sechzehn Deutsche Tänze und zwei Ecossaisen, Op 33/D783
(from Zwölf Deutsche Tänze genannt ‘Ländler’, Op posth 171/D790: No 2, which is virtually identical to D783/I/1)
Zwölf Valses nobles, Op 77/D969

In the nine Valses-Caprices the following themes are used:

No 1: D783/I/15; D365/22; D734/14
No 2: D365/1; D145/II/3; D365/6; D145/II/4; D145/II/5; D365/32
No 3: D145/I/1; D783/I/4; D365/19; D365/20; D365/25 elided with the second part of D365/20; D145/I/6; D145/I/9
No 4: D365/29; D365/33
No 5: D365/14; D969/3
No 6: D969/9; D969/10; D779/13
No 7: D783/I/1; D783/I/7; D783/I/10
No 8: D783/I/9; D779/11; D779/2; D783/I/5; D783/I/14; D783/I/13; D783/I/2
No 9: D365/2

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1995