Liszt, piano sonata in B minor

 
As love conquers all, when he was thirty-six Franz Liszt slowed down his incessant and extensive touring as a piano performer at the behest of his new partner, Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who suggested that he would do better devoting all his efforts to composition. They had met in Kyiv in 1847, on the occasion of Liszt's tour of cities in the Russian Empire. Carolyne, long distanced from her husband and in charge of their daughter, soon followed the maestro to Weimar, where Liszt resided, or rather, had to do so. From then on, Carolyne would accompany Franz for nearly forty years though they never married, and their relationship of the last years became purely epistolary.

In Weimar
Five years earlier, in 1842, Franz Liszt had taken up the post of Kapellmeister of Weimar, the capital city of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, signing a contract obliging him to stay in Weimar for at least three months a year, a commitment that Liszt fulfilled as he pleased. Interestingly, Grand Duke Karl Friedrich and his wife, Duchess Maria Pavlovna Romanova, were surprisingly tolerant of the maestro's informality. This is shown by a letter that Karl Alexander, son of the couple, sent to his friend Liszt reminding him of his engagement to Weimar with astonishing delicacy:

"I hope you won't be angry with me if I distract you for a moment from all your activities. I have taken up the pen only to ask you how everything is going, and especially, how everything is going with you. I have heard nothing from you for a long time, except for a few words that [a common acquaintance] passed on to me when he returned from Vienna. He told me that you work quite hard, so I am sorry not to see you, given your self-imposed task... Don't grudge me if I try to slip the name of Weimar into your plans..... The Grand Duchess and I look forward to seeing our wishes come true in December..... If the summer had already dashed my hopes of seeing you again, let the winter be the one to keep the promise..."

                                                                                                    Yours most affectionately
                                                                                                            Karl Alexander

This situation went on until 1848 when Liszt took Carolyne and her daughter to Weimar, where they lived until 1859 in a residence that Maria Pavlovna placed at the master's disposal. The duchess, pianist, lover, and patron of the arts, was also the one who paid Franz's salary out of her own pocket. A rather low salary, to the extent that the maestro went so far as saying that he regarded the income from Weimar as "little money for cigars", which explains, to a certain extent, Liszt's scant commitment to the court.

Grand Duchess
Maria Pavlona Romanova
(1786 - 1859)

The virtuoso calms down

But from 1848 onwards, following Carolyne's advice, he remained for long periods in the city, devoted to composition and conducting, making known there the new works of his colleagues, or those of the recent past, and performing highly celebrated stagings of all of them. In a relatively short time the composer became the great organizer of musical life in Weimar, in the company of Carolyne and, it must also be said, by the hand of the grand duke and his duchess, both illustrious and distinguished enlightened despots, notwithstanding the paltry emoluments of their court musicians.

The production of those years

As for the orchestral corpus, it should be noted that much of Liszt's compositional work was done during this period (for which Carolyne would have to be given a pat on the back). Such important works as the Faust and Dante symphonies, twelve of his thirteen tone poems, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 were dated around this time. To all this, we can add his most celebrated piano scores: the Transcendental Études, the second volume of Années de Pélerinage, the Consolations and, of course, a fundamental work of the romantic piano: his only sonata written for the instrument, composed between 1852 and 1853, presented here in an admirable rendition by the brilliant Chinese pianist Yundi Li.

Piano Sonata in B minor
Published in 1854, it was premiered in public by Franz von Büllow, Liszt's pupil and son-in-law, on January 27, 1857. It is dedicated to Robert Schumann.
Despite its title, it does not present the typical sonata form of the classical-romantic period but a very personal framework of the form, a large continuous stroke of half an hour that dispenses with the traditional "exposition, development, recapitulation" scheme for a first movement. However, the following movements are marked, even if they are played continuously:

     00  Lento assai - allegro energico - grandioso

12:05  Andante sostenuto

18:42  Allegro energico - andante sostenuto - lento assai

In its development, each instant is born as a consequence of the previous one to lead in the most natural way towards the following one. Thus, a theme that may sound threatening or violent, can soon mutate into a beautiful and serene melody, or vice versa. This is what happens, for example, at minute 5:50, whose idea is taken up even more quietly and melodiously in the andante sostenuto, minute 13:11, revisited in turn in the third movement at 22:46 and then tackled with resolute verve at 24:07.

The piece ends demurely, with the single note B on the low part of the keyboard.

Reception of the work

The work was generally well-received, but as it takes all sorts to make a world, the great Clara Schumann, pianist, composer and wife of the dedicatee, did not find it amusing, as she pointed out at the time: "What a noise without reason! No sound thought, everything is tangled; not even a clear harmonic chaining is to be found."

Nevertheless, almost a century later Richard Strauss wrote the following in a letter to the pianist Wilhelm Kempff: "If Liszt had only written this sonata, a gigantic work born from a single cell, it would have been enough to demonstrate the strength of his spirit".