Daniel Paul Horn:

>There have been a few recordings of Liszt on period instruments, the
>details of which escape me, in addition to a recent boomlet in Chopin on
>19th-century pianos.  (Emanuel Ax is only the best-known pianist to explore
>Chopin this way on disc.)

Is he playing on a Pleyel or on an Erard?

>Period Liszt isn't really such a silly notion; I've practiced some Liszt
>(the Fantasy on "A Midsummer Night's Dream") on an 1850's Erard grand, and
>been greatly struck by how truly orchestral those old instruments could be
>-- even more so than our current grands.

Interesting.  I have a recording where Dag Achatz plays on Liszt's own
instrument, and some of them are in a reasonably good condition.

>However, living as he did during the era of Progress, with a lifespan
>that enabled him to be heard by Beethoven and Debussy, the inevitable
>question arises -- which period? Does one use an early Viennese six-octave
>fortepiano of the sort that might have been in Carl Czerny's teaching
>studio, or an early modern Steinway of the sort made available to him late
>in life?

Apart from works composed in the 1820s, I think we can exclude the early
Viennese.  But remember that he reworked his Transcendental Studies and
the Paganini Studies mainly because of the heavier action of the pianos of
the 1850s (compared to the pianos of the 1830s).  So the answer is that
different periods requires different pianos, at least from a technichal
point of view.

>I am unaware of any comments from him suggesting that older music should
>not be played on earlier instruments, and of course his Bach arrangements
>seem to suggest that he was anything but not a HIP-style purist.

I'll have a look in Kenneth Hamilton's "B minor sonata".  Kenneth Hamilton
suggests that L.  would have disliked the bright high register of modern
pianos.

And yes, definitely not a purist, Liszt was very good at adapting and
rearranging music for different media (ensembles and instrument).  I would
call him an "optimizer".  His arrangement of Schubert's Wanderer and his
edition of Schubert's Impromptus springs to mind.

>DPHorn, wishing that history weren't quite so messy.

If you're into Liszt, things will by definition be messy.

Mikael Rasmusson
(who actually was thinking about HIP-orchestral-Liszt)