Franz Liszt - Album d'un voyageur, S156 (1837-1838)

Franz Liszt - Album d'un voyageur, S156
Performer: France Clidat, Ashley Wass, Leslie Howard, Iren Marik, Cyprien Katsaris

Book I: Impressions et poésies
00:00 - 1. Lyon (France Clidat)
07:53 - 2a. Le lac de Wallenstadt (Leslie Howard)
10:47 - 2b. Au bord d'une source (Ashley Wass)
15:12 - 3. Les cloches de G***** (Ashley Wass)
27:44 - 4. Vallée d'Obermann (Iren Marik)
41:09 - 5. La chapelle de Guillaume Tell (Ashley Wass)
48:26 - 6. Psaume(Ashley Wass)
Book II: Fleurs mélodiques des Alpes
53:24 - 7a. Allegro (Leslie Howard)
55:13 - 7b. Lento (Leslie Howard)
59:30 - 7c. Allegro pastorale (Cyprien Katsaris)
1:03:02 - 8a. Andante con sentimento (Leslie Howard)
1:07:24 - 8b. Andante molto espressivo (Leslie Howard)
1:14:38 - 8c. Allegro moderato (Leslie Howard)
1:18:05 - 9a. Allegretto (Leslie Howard)
1:22:03 - 9b. Allegretto (Leslie Howard)
1:25:14 - 9c. Andantino con molto sentimento (Leslie Howard)
Book III: Paraphrases
1:29:19 - 10. Ranz de vaches [de F Huber] – Aufzug auf die Alpe – Improvisata (Leslie Howard)
1:39:59 - 11. Un soir dans les montagnes [de Knop] – Nocturne pastorale (Leslie Howard)
1:51:00 - 12. Ranz de chèvres [de F Huber] – Allegro finale (Leslie Howard)
Appendix：
1:57:28 – 2a bis. Le lac de Wallenstadt (Leslie Howard)

The first part of the collection, Impressions et poésies, is by far the most important, and was deliberately designed to be so. In his rather florid preface, Liszt indicated that the subsequent parts would be filled with lighter folk material (although, at that stage, he envisaged that material as representing a great many countries) and that the poetic ideal to which he aspired was for the enjoyment of the few rather than the many. The set begins with a piece composed in 1834, inspired by a workers’ uprising in Lyon, dedicated to Liszt’s mentor, the Abbé Félicité de Lammenais, and prefaced with the workers’ slogan: ‘Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant’ (‘Live working or die fighting’). Cast as a powerful, orchestral-sounding march, the work is very tightly constructed from an introductory fanfare figure and a more extended melody which share a martial dotted rhythm. The climax is particularly noteworthy for anticipating by some twenty years the sleep motif from the closing scene of Wagner’s Die Walküre.Most of the remaining music was composed in Geneva between 1835 and 1836. ‘Le Lac de Wallenstadt’ is very little different from its revised version, and similarly carries a quotation from Byron’s Childe Harold: ‘thy contrasted lake … warns me, with its stillness, to for sake / Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.’ A rhythmic ostinato of a triplet and two duplets accompanies the most innocent of melodies. With no change of key or subject matter, ‘Au bord d’une source’ follows immediately. The poem from Schiller describes the spring as the beginning of the play of young nature. It must be admitted that this first version of one of Liszt’s loveliest water pieces contains many technical complications which were more delicately resolved in the revision.