The Procession by Night; Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (Two Episodes from Lenau's Faust).(Brief article)(Book review)

The Procession by Night; Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (Two Episodes from Lenau's Faust), by Franz Liszt, edited by Leslie Howard. Edition Peters, 2007. www.edition-peters.com; 52 pp. $19.95.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This important Urtext edition brings together for the first time Liszt's piano solo versions of his two episodes from Nikolaus Lenau's poem Faust. It was Liszt's intention that the pieces be published together, but for a variety of reasons that never happened. As the esteemed pianist Leslie Howard notes in his preface, the piano solo version of The Procession by Night has often been omitted from catalogues of Liszt's authentic works because it was a transcription by his student Robert Freund, who worked from the composer's versions for orchestra and for piano duet. But, according to Howard, Liszt left his mark on virtually every bar of Freund's manuscript, indicating pedaling, dynamics, slurs, fingering and instructions to the printer.

The two pieces ...