The Sixth & The Fourth
Program
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony no. 6 in F major, op. 68, op. 68 (‘Pastorale’) (1807/08) , version for piano by Franz Liszt S. 464/6
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony no. 4 in B-flat major, op. 60 (1806) , version for piano by Franz Liszt, S. 464/4
Artists
Hinrich Alpers piano
Boris Bloch piano
In 1840, faced with the especially demanding Leipzig audience, Liszt placed a symphony on his programme that he was particularly fond of playing: the ‘Pastorale’. Wouldn’t the original have been more fitting in a city groomed on Mendelssohn, Schumann and the Gewandhaus? Whatever the case, he did not consider his piano reductions to be stopgaps compensating for the lack of an orchestra. He trusted the modern grand piano to have all the necessary qualities, bar none: ‘Through the immense development of its harmonic power the piano is increasingly seeking to appropriate all orchestral compositions. In the compass of its seven octaves it is able … to reproduce all the characteristics, all the combinations, all the forms of the deepest and most profound works of music’.
Steigenberger Grandhotel Petersberg, Rotunde
