Gripings and grumblings on the Liszt piano transcription of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, specifically the final (4th) movement of this work, with its choral centerpiece, the Ode to Joy. Which Apple Music was bringing to me during my 2 am whizz break. The Beethoven is one of the monuments of Western music, and though I have heard it over a hundred times in my long life, it still moves me deeply, at several levels. It comes with the intellectual and emotional satisfactions of two other lifetime favorites, Handel’s Messiah and one of the Beethoven’s antecedents, Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli (with which it shares more than the timpani).
But, alas, I was not getting the Beethoven, I was getting Liszt’s flashy piano fantasy on the score of the Beethoven, which pretty much annoys the hell out of me. Some of Liszt’s piano transcriptions have the virtue of bringing out the thematic or motivic structure of a work. God knows the Beethoven is complexly structured; there is something of an industry devoted to unpacking this marvelous complexity. But I can’t see anything structurally revelatory in the Liszt, with its plinky bits and its bombastic bits, all showy technique.
The problem might be insurmountable: the piano is percussive in its sound, extraordinarily so in a work of great drama. The Beethoven does use those timpani (and some other percussion instruments), but as amplifying notes in a work that’s richly and variously sonorous. It’s carried along by the string section, the winds (especially the brass section; it’s scored for 4 horns, 2 trumpets, and 3 trombones, which resound brightly in triumph and delight), and of course the human voice. Do it on the piano as a bravura display, and it has no soul.
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