AB II-29

Description

Franz Liszt

VALSE POUR MARIE

In the evening of 19 November 1842, the great pianist and composer Franz Liszt and the world-famous tenor Giovanni Rubini arrived in The Hague. They settled in Hôtel du Maréchal de Turenne on the Korte Houtstraat. Letters to Marie d’Agoult in Paris reveal that Liszt was not feeling well in those first days in the Netherlands and mainly held his room in anticipation of the first concert on 23 November. To pass the time, in these days he wrote a nice little waltz for his beloved. This composition, the only one known to have been written on Dutch soil, was first published by the great French Liszt expert Serge Gut in his Correspondance Franz Liszt – Marie d’Agoult and several years later by Adrienne Kaczmarczyk in Volume XIII of Editio Musica Budapest’s Supplements to Works for Piano Solo. The waltz is to be found in Franz Liszt in the Netherlands as well, but I have also made it available separately as a sheet music edition.
In that edition, after photos of the autographs and the ‘Urtext’ – the notes as given in the manuscript – one also finds a fully written-out and marked score. In fact, the composition had never been prepared for publication by Liszt. Articulation and dynamics are almost entirely lacking, and especially where repetitions are concerned, the composer notated the piece rather cryptically. The additions and some suggestions regarding performance are explained in detail in an afterword: ‘From Autograph to Marked Score – Analysis, Critical Commentary and Interpretation’.

The level of difficulty of Valse pour Marie is not high and can be placed at Grade VII on a scale of I-XII.

REVIEWS

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
© 2024 AB Music Productions & Editions, The Hague.
ISBN: 978-90-834573-1-4.
With a preface, pictures of the surviving sketch, the Urtext, and an elaborated score.
20 pages; language: English.