A perennial favorite with Ching-Yun's audiences, this program explores works that showcase Liszt's chameleonic approach to composition across his mammoth body of work. The musical metamorphosis this program charts speaks not only to Liszt's own musical development — from his early years producing works inspired by Beethoven to the mists and fog he evokes with abstract tonality in his later works — but his ability to transform the music of composers Liszt deeply admired.

The opening Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este presents Liszt as a composer of vivid, painterly impressions decades before the musical style made famous by Debussy and Ravel. With its waves of whispering and shimmering arpeggios gliding throughout the full range of the keyboard, this work immediately enchants listeners and draws them in.

A collection of five lieder transcriptions speak to a side of Liszt often forgotten — one rooted in his spirituality and deep love for German poetry. These Schubert and Schumann lieder are instantly recognizable to many listeners, and even without their texts, Liszt's mesmerizing transcriptions chart a journey of the heart — reflecting on love and longing, the passage of time, and the supernatural realm that lies beyond what our eyes can see.

The program's second half offers some of Liszt's most colorful and spirited music. The Three Concert Études are scintillating tone poems that, in terms of cinematic scope, match the power of those he wrote for large orchestra. And the Rhapsodie espagnole brings the recital to a showstopping conclusion in an exhilarating celebration of Spanish culture, inspired by the composer's own travels to the Iberian Peninsula in 1845.