Franz Liszt

My favourite composer is Liszt. His masterpiece "The B minor Sonata" rises among Liszt's other works like a majestic snow-capped peak.  Dedicated to Robert Schumann, it stands out in the profundity of conception, the scope and boldness of creative endeavour. It encompasses images of heroic struggle, gentle lyricism and gloomy scepticism. Racking doubts, sublime meditation, love ecstasy, grief for the lost ideals - in a word, life in all its contradictory aspects is unfolded before the listener.

This sonata is often referred to as Faust Sonata - and with good reason, too. In its imagery and emotional range, it is, indeed, close to Goethe's immortal work. Liszt himself, however, never drew any parallel between the content of his Sonata and the plot of "Faust", nor did he precede it with any literary program at all. His sonata expresses, with compelling profundity and force, his cherished ideas, his views on life, Man and the surrounding world.

Hungarian rhapsodies are among Liszt's most popular piano works. Composed at different periods of his life, they represent, in their totality, a finished whole, vast in its concept and brilliant in its execution. In this cycle Liszt succeeded in producing a comprehensive picture of the people's life.

Liszt made wide use of the national methods of ornamentation and even execution.   In the piano texture of the rhapsodies we often find imitations of some favourite instruments of Hungarian Gypsies, especially the cymbals (tremolo, passages and repetitions).