Études d'exécution transcendante

Liszt’s 12 Études d’exécution transcendante (Studies of Transcendental Execution), completed in 1851, took many years to reach their final form. In 1826, when Liszt was already a Paris-based teenage sensation as a virtuoso pianist, he wrote his Étude en douze exercices (Study in Twelve Exercises, S. 136). This was a technically fairly simple sequence of 12 studies in alternating major and minor keys. Eleven years later, in 1837, by now the most brilliant composer/pianist of his era, Liszt recomposed the set as 12 Grandes études (Large Studies, S. 137), with the original material extended and elaborated into music of vast technical difficulty. Finally the music was reworked once again as the Études d’exécution transcendante. Liszt now trimmed back some of the material and slightly reduced the technical demands (although these are still formidable); he also gave each study a descriptive or poetic title. The set includes some of his greatest inspirations, remarkable for the music’s surging power and imaginative range. A famous example is “Mazeppa” (No. 4 in D minor), based on a poem by Victor Hugo about a captured Cossack tied naked to a wild horse, which is set free to gallop across the plain. Others are the extremely difficult “Feux follets” (“Wills-o’-the-Wisp”, No. 5 in B-flat major), the tumultuous “Wilde Jagd” (“Wild Hunt”, No. 8 in C minor) and the haunting and atmospheric “Chasse-neige” (“Snowstorm”, No. 12 in B-flat minor).