Liszt F. Concerto № 2 (A major). For two pianos

Liszt seemed to have opened the new chapter in the piano concerto history. The previous phases were connected with the names of Mozart (Viennese classical concerto) and Beethoven, having made heroic the idea, thus strengthening dramatic features and contrasts between solo and tutti. Basing Beethoven, the composers of romanticism worked out further opportunities of concerto symphonization. Liszt’s concertos don’t have аnу special programmes. Meanwhile their kinship with the composer’s symphonic poems is quite evident. The concertos consist of оne movement so as the poems, though their rather distinct divisions correspond to the usual symphonic cycle. Monothematic principle directs its construction, where the main theme fastens together the whole composition bу means of being enlightened with different moods.

Both concertos were conceived approximately simultaneously. Those were the thirties. However, later they were undergoing the process of remaking. The final version of Concerto Es-dur (No 1) dates 1856, the Concerto A-dur (No 2) dates 1861.

Beside the two concertos, Liszt composed series of works for piano and orchestra. Among them there are the following: “Death’s Dance”, the paraphrase to the medieval choral “Dies irae” with six variations; Fantasy to folk Hungarian themes (author’s transcription of the Fourteenth rhapsody), arrangement of F. Schubert’s phantasy “Stranger” etc.

From the book “History оf Foreign Music”, bу Mikhail Druskin, issue 4