Liszt and the KeyboardAuthor(s): Howard Schott and F. LioniSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 118, No. 1617 (Nov., 1977), p. 911Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/959969 .

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Letters to the Editor

LISZT AND THE KEYBOARD At the risk of seeming unappreciative of Alan Walker's informative article 'Liszt and the Key- board' (Sept MT, p.717), I must correct inaccur- acies in it concerning Liszt's pianos. The instrument with which he was most intimately associated throughout his concert career from its beginnings in Paris was the Erard grand. Unlike his friend Chopin, Liszt did not perform publicly on the Pleyel in France or elsewhere. Erard pianos were also widely used in Germany at the time, before the great development of the domestic industry after 1850. Since Erards maintained an English as well as a French establishment, there was no reason for Liszt to abandon his preferred familiar piano for Broadwood's or any other local make at the time of his London debut in 1824 or on his return visits. Indeed, though no longer exclusively, Liszt played the Erard to the last, keeping such a piano in his apartments in Rome where he spent his last winter. His claviorganum, an Erard grand combined with a two-manual and pedal Alexandre reed organ, now in the Vienna museum, was owned by him to the end.

It is equally incorrect to state that 'Broadwoods, Pleyels and Erards . . . had a restricted compass, and a delicate tone best suited to the salon'. Along with other manufacturers of Liszt's time, their concert instruments also evolved from a 6½-octave range of C'-f"" in about 1820 to add first g"" then a"", finally attaining a full seven octaves of A"-a"" about the time of the Great Exposition of 1851. (The extension to c""' came in only during the last quarter of the century and is not required for Liszt's music.) As to the 'delicate tone', one must bear in mind that the concert halls in which Liszt and his contemporaries played seated a few hundred at most. It was very exceptional for pianists to perform in larger auditoriums, as Liszt and Thalberg did on occasion on their Erard grands in the old Paris Opera.

It was not unfair to describe Liszt as a 'smasher of pianos' when he did just that in public on the same Graf instruments which Clara Schumann, ever the lady, played with no such lethal effect. The romantic Danhauser portrait of Liszt playing to an imagined group of friends, dated 1840, shows him seated at a Conrad Graf instrument. But not very many years later Liszt made the fame of Ignaz and Ludwig B6sendorfer's pianos almost overnight when they were able to withstand his assaults better than Graf's ever had done. Before Bosendorfer jr arrived on the scene, Viennese pianos had traditionally been of much lighter construction than English and French contem- porary instruments. The picture of Liszt playing at a benefit concert in Budapest in 1875 shows him at a Bosendorfer grand. He used this maker's instruments as well as his Chickering grand during his annual teaching visits to the Hungarian capital.

In his last years Liszt's Weimar house instrument was the Bechstein grand still in the Hofgartnerei. But he also owned or had regular access to pianos by Erard, Steinway, Chickering and Bosendorfer. Unlike the days of his youthful concert tours, when it was necessary to have Erards ship pianos as far as Russia and Turkey, the later 19th century was distinguished by a host of excellent piano

makers. Liszt encouraged them and took interest in their work, as witness his enthusiastic corres- pondence with Steinway in New York about the tone-sustaining third pedal they had recently brought to his notice. The wide choice among first-rate instruments at this time in his life made it easy for Liszt to have many loves in this respect.

Finally, I must take issue with the statement that 'only when the great firms of Steinway and Bech- stein produced their powerfully reinforced instru- ments in the 1860s did the Romantic repertory of the 1840s come into its own'. Similar statements praising the modern grand piano as the fulfilment of Bach's instrumental yearnings may be found in the writings of Spitta and his contemporaries. The revival of the harpsichord and clavichord as well as the neo-classic organ have given the lie to such misguided expressions of the 19th century's uncritical faith in 'progress'. The comparable revival of earlier types of piano is still in its infancy. But such pioneers as Richard Burnett and Kenneth van Barthold in this country have now begun to re-educate us in respect of the great Romantic piano repertory. I, for one, deny that the piano of Reger and Rakhmaninov is necessarily entitled to be considered the ideal medium for interpreting the works of Schumann and Chopin.

Oxford HOWARD SCHOTT *

Alan Walker was right when he wrote in his inter- esting article 'Liszt and the Keyboard' that 'the new Liszt Edition does a grave disservice to Liszt scholarship by suppressing the earlier versions'. It is indeed a pity that these earlier versions are not given, and therefore a reprint of the older Breitkopf collected edition is warmly recommended. Liszt's earlier or alternative versions are almost always very interesting and more difficult and in my opinion sometimes superior to the final versions. Compare for instance the so-called 'Campanella- Etude' with its original version, much more difficult and much more Paganini and therefore more faithful to the violin caprice and Liszt's intentions to 'translate' these caprices for the piano.

Regarding Lyapunov's Transcendental Studies, let us not forget that Sorabji wrote also about a hundred (!) of these studies, which sorely need a modern edition.

May I be permitted to make one observation? Wasn't it J. L. Dussek who was the first pianist to play with his face 'en profil' to the public (le beau Dussek!) and consequently with his piano at right angles to the platform ?

Bleiswijk, Netherlands F. LIONI

BAROQUE VIOLIN TECHNIQUE Reading the issues of MT that have accumulated during six months' absence abroad, I notice a most welcome 'campaign' among your reviewers to sort out the more from the less authentic among the various claimants to authentic performance of Baroque music. One aspect of this, however, troubles me: the use of a chinrest on a Baroque violin.

As far as we can ascertain, during the 17th and well into the 18th century, the chin was not common- ly rested on the violin to hold it in position. Thus,

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