Années de pèlerinage I

Liszt completed his first book of Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) for piano in 1854, but the music began life much earlier than that. In 1835 Liszt eloped from Paris to Geneva with Marie, Countess d’Agoult, who left her husband and two children to be with him. Thrilled by the Swiss mountain scenery, Liszt composed Album d’un voyageur (Traveller’s Album, 1835-38), a three-part collection of piano pieces whose first volume was “Impressions et poésies” (“Impressions and Poems”). Nearly 20 years later, this provided the material, revised to varying degrees, of the first “year” of Années de pèlerinage, subtitled “Suisse” (“Switzerland”). This contains one of Liszt’s great piano masterworks, “Vallée d’Obermann” (“Obermann’s Valley”), inspired by the brooding Romanticism of Étienne de Senancour’s novel. Other superb achievements are “La Chapelle de Guillaume Tell” (“William Tell’s Chapel”), with its echoing alphorn calls, and “Les cloches de Genève” (“The Bells of Geneva”), whose original version was dedicated to Liszt’s and Marie’s newly born daughter, Blandine.