Hyperion Records

None of the Liszt catalogues currently available seems to be aware of the existence of a later edition of the Zwölf Lieder (S558) collection of twelve song transcriptions, which was issued by Cranz in about 1879. Half of the pieces remained as they had been in the earlier edition, with very minor matters of presentation altered in some cases but with no change to the musical text, and indeed the Ave Maria was reprinted from the old plates. Usually, when Liszt revised and republished a piece he organised some legend to that effect to be printed on the cover. For some reason this did not happen with the Twelve Songs and it seems from the number of printing errors, and especially from the corrupt state of the published score of Ständchen, that proof-reading was minimal.

In the new version of Du bist die Ruh’ the second part of the song, containing the two climaxes, is recast, with less hand-crossing and a little less grandeur. The final version of Erlkönig makes many minor tidyings-up of technical details, offers some new ossia passages (recorded here) and reworks the coda completely; the final version of Frühlingsglaube extends the cadences at the end of each verse by one bar, and adds a few notes to the cadenza. In Gretchen am Spinnrade Liszt adds a short introduction, abstracted from the middle of the work.

In Ständchen von Shakespeare the first statement is altered in a myriad of tiny details, and the general effect is more fragile and restrained. Liszt clearly made the revisions for this version with a copy of the earlier edition, scissors, paste, extra music paper, pen and coloured crayon—his general way with such revisions. Something has gone awry with the printing after the first four bars of the second verse: the next five bars are retained from the first version, but the replacement of the last four of these comes hot on their heels and is obviously the preferred new text. The extra five bars must go, but one bar must be added (adapted from the earlier text) to conform sequentially with the revised version of the passage which follows. The revision itself continues the more gossamer-like approach to the piece, and the much-curtailed ending is quite ethereal. Here, as in most cases with these works, the whereabouts of any manuscript or Stichvorlage is unknown.

The alterations to Der Wanderer are largely confined, to the end of the opening paragraph, where the left-hand figuration is entirely rewritten; to a new version of the end of the second verse, with dark tremolos in the bass, but on the whole a simpler texture than before; and to the last verse, where all figuration is jettisoned and everything is reduced to the musical bare bones.

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1995