New understanding of concert arrangements

With her dissertation on Franz Liszt's Schubert transcriptions, Swiss pianist and musicologist Andrea Wiesli has made a long-overdue plea for virtuoso song arrangements. In eleven chapters ranging from "Liszt's paths to Schubert" to "The song transcription as a new genre" and "Schubert's song cycles newly composed" to "'More dreamed than emphasized' - Aesthetics and dramaturgy of the Schubert image in Liszt", the author mainly deals with the pianistic transformation of Schubert's songs into groundbreaking transcriptions in order to also include the problem of additionally composed additions.

The "highlights of Schubert's early reception", published in 1838 with deviations in Vienna and Paris, are at the center of the numerous work reviews. 12 songs by Franz Schubert. In addition to the melodies, they contain Singing on the water and Restless love even such popular ones as the Erlkönig or Gretchen at the spinning wheel. She explains the form, harmony and aesthetics of the Viennese model's formative influence on the co-founder of the New German School in detailed, linguistically brilliant analyses of these frequently published transcriptions. The excursus on the song arrangements by Stephen Heller, which were written at almost the same time, or the presentation of the orchestrated Wanderer fantasy as a piano concerto provide great reading pleasure over and above the scientific findings.

With comparative quotations of notes, Andrea Wiesli also deals with Liszt as an idiosyncratic editor of Schubert's piano music, with the orchestrated songs and the Hungarian tone of both composers. Her fundamental publication is the first comprehensive demonstration that Liszt's multifaceted engagement with Schubert runs like a common thread through his life and work. As the author writes, Liszt "succeeded in striking a balance between fidelity to the text and independence, placing the arrangement alongside the original as an equal work of art".

Carefully researched data on Liszt's Schubert reception during the Viennese concert tours from 1838 to 1846, a music index with printing plate numbers and an extensive bibliography round off the publication, which is subtly designed with many examples of sheet music.

Andrea Wiesli: "I was always drawn away to him in joy and sorrow". The Schubert transcriptions of Franz Liszt, 328 p., numerous sheet music, € 60.00, Franz-Steiner-Verlag, Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-515-12137-8