Franz Liszt (b. Raiding / Doborján, Hungary, October 22, 1811; d. Bayreuth, Germany, July 31, 1886)
Composed 1865; 70 minutes
By the mid-1860s, Franz Liszt stood at a decisive turning point. The dazzling touring virtuoso of the 1830s and 40s had withdrawn from the concert platform, now settling largely in Rome, and taken minor holy orders. Composition, teaching, and the consolidation of his legacy took precedence over touring and pianistic display. It was in this reflective phase in 1865, living in a simple monastery high on a hill overlooking Rome, that Liszt completed and revised his monumental cycle of solo piano versions of the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven—a project begun nearly three decades earlier and finally brought to publication as a unified whole.
Liszt’s aim was not mere reduction but re-creation. He consistently resisted the term “transcription,” preferring “partition de piano”—piano score—to signal fidelity to the orchestral original in all its structural and expressive detail. “I shall consider my time well spent if I have been able to carry over to the piano not just the broad strokes of Beethoven’s compositions, but, in addition, the multitude of finer details which contribute so powerfully to the complete whole. I shall be satisfied if I have fulfilled the duty of an intelligent engraver, or a conscientious translator who grasps the spirit of a work along with the letter, and who thus helps to spread an understanding of the master and an appreciation of beauty.” The task was both practical and idealistic—to place Beethoven’s symphonies within reach of musicians and listeners far from the concert hall, and to test the expressive limits of the piano itself.
His approach in 1865 differs sharply from the earlier, more overtly virtuosic arrangements of Symphonies Nos. 5, 6, and 7 from 1837–38. These youthful versions, conceived in the throes of a punishing touring career, often translate orchestral brilliance into pianistic spectacle—bold octave doublings, sweeping arpeggiation, and rhetorical flourish that proclaim the performer as much as the composer. By contrast, the later revisions and new completions—including the final form of the Ninth—pursue clarity, balance, and textual exactitude. The pianist becomes an interpreter of the score rather than its re-imaginer in a medium through which Beethoven’s architecture speaks with minimal intrusion.
The Ninth Symphony posed the greatest challenge. Liszt had already arranged it for two pianos in 1853 for the publisher Schott in a format that allowed the choral finale to unfold with relative fullness. The solo piano version demanded a more radical solution. The orchestral and vocal textures of the final movement—recitative, variations, fugato, and the great choral peroration—had to be compressed without losing their cumulative force. Liszt concluded that no one could achieve this on the piano alone. But his publishers pushed back, forcing Liszt to spend more time and reflection in his small, white-washed monk’s cell at the Madonna del Rosario. His eventual solution is both ingenious and austere—the choral lines are printed with Schiller’s text on separate staves above the transcribed piano score. In this final synthesis, Liszt’s piano score, while at times literally unplayable, maintains Beethoven’s vision and becomes an act of homage—not to the instrument, but to the composer himself, refracted through one of the 19th century’s most searching musical minds.
Tonight’s performance offers a different solution. We hear Liszt’s piano score played in its entirety by Stewart Goodyear, with Beethoven’s vocal parts sung as Beethoven wrote them. “To me,” writes Goodyear, “Beethoven's Ninth Symphony depicts the composer’s belief in the highest level of humanity, brotherhood and sisterhood, and community that has no walls. The audience hears Beethoven's belief set to music in the first three movements, and having the audience hear the voices stating this belief in words in the fourth movement is very important.”
— Program notes copyright © 2026 Keith Horner.
Comments welcomed: khornernotes@gmail.com