I’m grateful to have shared a moment of her journey and delighted to recommend this to you. She innovates in endearing ways, such as bringing a piano to a busy city street to serenade passers-by with Beethoven, or setting up an inpromptu performance of Chopin or show tunes on the beach! Her intense desire to light a fire in people’s hearts has become her musical signature.Įnjoy as Liszt and Lisitsa weave a web of magic in this performance of La Campanella. She plays across the world, plus you can find her recordings and videos on line. Her papers and exams were a joy to read.Īnd oh what a pianist, even then! It was clear that she had the gifts necessary to open doors in the difficult business of music.Īnd, indeed, Lisitsa did it. An outstanding student, highly knowledgable before she ever came to us at SMU, she wrote elegantly in what was, for her, a second language (or possibly third or fourth!). Long ago, Valentina Lisitsa sat in my music history classes at Southern Methodist University. That’s one reason I want to share this particular performance of Liszt’s riveting La Campanella. To play Liszt well is to master piano technique.Ī great pleasure of teaching is watching students grow into accomplished professionals. Even today, his compositions represent the pinnacle of virtuosity. Largely self-taught and inspired by the virtuoso violinist Paganini, Hungarian-born Franz Liszt (1811-1886) created a dazzling vocabulary of physical gymnastics and musical color for the piano. Women really did throw diamond necklaces at him and faint in the aisles. A celebrity on the level of a Frank Sinatra or Elvis, his piano playing stunned everyone who heard it. Leslie Howard played the piece at a festival of Spanish music in Madrid in 2015, having recorded it 19 years earlier as part of his complete survey of Liszt's works for solo piano.The name of Liszt resounded across Europe in the 19th century. Valentina Lisitsa has performed and recorded her interpretation on YouTube (in 2011), including an impromptu performance on a public upright piano at London's St Pancras railway station in 2013. The modern concert pianist Mikhail Pletnev was eager to play it live, but gave up, calling it "unplayable". He performed it in front of George Sand who praised it and wrote extensively about it, and Hector Berlioz hailed it as Liszt's finest work. Liszt initially intended this piece as a bravura finale for his recitals, but hardly ever played it. Compared to La campanella 's infamous two-to-three octave jumps, the Rondeau 's leaps are two octaves greater. It contains a great quantity of effects and virtuoso feats, including chord tremolos with accompanying thirds, wide jumps, fast repetitive notes, and arpeggios and octaves at a breakneck tempo, keeping a deciso (decisive) attitude throughout. It has been hailed as one of the most technically challenging solo piano compositions in classical pianism. After each excursion the theme keeps coming back around as in a typical rondo. As with Liszt's other piano works based on other composers' pieces, it contains a complete exploration of the elements of the theme. Liszt's piece is essentially a set of variations on the song, loosely organized in rondo form. The song was made popular by García's daughter, the well-known mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran. Liszt's piano piece was based on Manuel Garcia's popular aria "Yo que soy contrabandista" for soprano female singer, guitar, and castanets, from his one-act zarzuela El poeta calculista. It lasts approximately 8–9 minutes according to the high tempo Liszt assigned, though most pianists play it slower (10–12 minutes) due to its incredible difficulty. It is based on a Spanish song popular at that time. 252, is a classical musical composition for piano solo by Franz Liszt, written in 1836, and published in 1837 as Liszt's Opus 5 No. Rondeau fantastique sur un thème espagnol: "El Contrabandista" ("Fantastic Rondo on the Spanish Theme The Smuggler"), S. JSTOR ( January 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Rondeau fantastique sur un thème espagnol" – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. It is based on Manuel Garcia's popular opera song 'Yo que soy Contrabandista', a short song for guitar, castanets, and soprano. It was first published in 1837 when Liszt was 26. 252), given an opus number by Liszt of Opus 5 no. This article needs additional citations for verification. Franz Liszt's 'Rondeau fantastique sur un thme espagnol' or 'El Contrabandista' (S.
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