Hyperion Records

The organists may have to concede Resignazione to the pianists. The previously known version, just one page long, has been in the repertoire of both instruments simply because there is no indication on the manuscript of Liszt’s requirements beyond a two-stave reading instrument. Now a more elaborate second version of the work has been published for the first time in 1992 from a hitherto unknown manuscript (in the Pierpont Morgan Library), and the piano is unequivocally stipulated. What is a strange and unfulfilled page of wistfulness is extended into a substantial and conclusive poem. So this is no transcription but really a new original composition. (The title, one supposes, is what Liszt thought was correct Italian for what is generally rendered Rassegnazione; his meaning is clear enough.)

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1993