No 3
after Paganini-Liszt owes its existence to the moment when I realized that the main theme of Paganini’s
La Campanella could be treated canonically. Everything took off from there, and though the ghost of Liszt is more or less constantly hovering, there is a good deal of pianistic and harmonic updating here. There are many things in this arrangement that even Liszt, with his penchant for innovation, would never have allowed himself. Out of these twelve études, this is the one which was the most significantly revised. I believe the piece is now rather more approachable pianistically, even though the difficulties are still considerable.
from notes by Marc-André Hamelin © 2010
English