Mikael Rasmusson wrote:

>I can get almost everything from Liszt, so varied is his output (and so
>humble are my demands).  He posessed several different musical "languages"
>... He is much more than "Mr Excessively Emotional-Bombastic"

Amen Brother!  Liszt is THE post-Beethoven pre-20th composer for me by
some distance, and maybe the only one who was actually a decent, generous
guy.  Even his place of death was generous-- he didn't really feel like
making that trip to Bayreuth, sick as he was, but he just couldn't say no
to Cosima and the memory of his "faithful friend" RW.  Now, the location
of his grave serves to enhance RW's mystique.  And good old Franz probably
doesn't even mind, wherever he is.

Mikael continued:

>You have to look hard in order to find good recordings of his music.  When
>it comes to non-piano music, you have to look even harder and sometimes you
>will find that some things never ever have been recorded....  He's still a
>dark horse...

Yeah.  It really bugs me that there's not another Heroide Funebre on disc
anywhere besides Masur's somewhat boring one and Haitink's excellent but
oh-so-very-very-slow one.  I know Halasz will eventually do it for Naxos,
and his last Liszt outing for them was wonderful, but jeez, I don't wanna
wait.  And is Masur the only one anywhere to have recorded the excellent
"Nachtlichte Zug" (sp?), the first of the 2 Pieces From Lenau's Faust? It's
a great piece but its nestmate, the Mephisto Waltz, seems to have eaten it
alive early on...

Incidentally, my appreciation and enjoyment of Liszt's tone poems was
increased exponentially by the chapter on them in Vol.2 of Alan Walker's
fabulous Liszt bio. He points out things my non-musically trained self
would never have picked up on.

Jon Lewis
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