Ferenc Liszt.(Review)

Ferenc Liszt. Albumblhtter fur Prinzessin Marie von Sayn-Wittgenstein. Hrsg. Von Maria Eckhardt. Erstausgabe. Budapest: Editio Musica Budapest, c2000. [Facsim. reprod. and edition, p. 2-9; commentary in Ger., Eng., Hun., p. 10-18; appendix, p. 19-23; acknowledgment, 1 p. Z. 14 268. DM 25.]

Bound in a striking red and gold cover, a new edition of short piano pieces by Franz (Ferenc) Liszt has appeared through the collaboration of Editio Musica Budapest with the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, Goetheund Schiller-Archiv. Only twenty-four pages in length, this new offering gives us a glimpse of some of the happy and more intimate moments in Liszt's personal life--that of his new relationship with Princess Carolyne Elisabeth Jeanne von Sayn-Wittgenstein (1819-1887) and her daughter, Princess Marie Pauline Antonia von Sayn- Wittgenstein (1837-1920)--and his approaching retirement from the concert stage.

The Budapest publication is an attractive quasi-replication of the red leather, gold embossed a]bum that originally contained seventy-two pages of music manuscript paper with decorative blue leaves awaiting to be filled with musical flowers. And musical flowers were to blossom from some of the most famous nineteenth-century composers. Excerpts or short original piano pieces not only from Liszt, but from Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Bedrich Smetana, Hans von Bulow, Anton Rubinstein, Carl Tausig, Joseph Joachim, Pauline Viardot-Garcfa, to name a few of the fortyfour illustrious musicians, are also found, making this little album a very precious item indeed and calling to mind a similar idea behind the famed Hexameron or Liszt's Chopsticks Variations.

It is possible that Liszt actually bought the red leather album for the little princess, but this has not yet been proven. On the original back flyleaf (not reproduced in the edited version), the inscription in French reads, "Institute for aristocratic young ladies, Odessa, August 30, 1847," thus denoting both the elite girls' school in Odessa frequented by Marie as well as the date that Liszt left there for the final concerts of his career-in Elisabethgrad.

Marie reserved the first entries uniquely for Liszt. Only from 1855-59 did she allow some of Liszt's above-mentioned Weimar devotees to contribute to the album, after which she married Prince Constantin von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst and subsequently moved to Vienna. The special father-daughter-like relationship between Liszt and Marie endured throughout the composer's lifetime.

Liszt first met Marie when her mother invited him to their Woronince estate (located between Kiev and Odessa) for the celebration of the girl's birthday on 18 February 1847. Carolyne, who had heard Liszt perform in Kiev only two weeks earlier, was deeply moved by his playing and compositions. Their mutual attraction quickly developed into deep love, and the rest of Liszt's life was dominated by this relationship.

The Albumblatter fur Prinzessin Marie von Sayn-Wiettgenstein contains a set of four folk like pieces for piano new to the catalog of Liszt's works: "Lilie," "Hryc," "Mazurek," and "Krakowiak." In addition to the cleanly printed urtext edition, the publication includes a facsimile reproduction of each manuscript leaf on the left facing page for comparison. Essentially harmonizations of Podolian Polish and Ukrainian folk melodies from Woronince and the surrounding area (which Liszt heard and which Marie would also have known), these pieces were assumably composed during Liszt's second visit to Woronince late in 1847, when Carolyne invited a gypsy band to perform for Liszt's birthday on 22 October 1847. Another Liszt piano work, the three-movement Glanes de Woronince, also dedicated to Marie (and whose first movement Dumka" is based upon the old Ukrainian folk ballad that begins "Hryts, Do Not Go to the Party Tonight"--also the basis of the piano piece "Hryc"), dates from 1847 as well and reflects Liszt's birth day celebration.