LDV82

24 BEETHOVEN/LISZT, SYMPHONY NO.9 To what extent is the transcription faithful to the orchestral text? Cédric Pescia: Throughout the great corpus of his transcriptions of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, Liszt displayed absolutely phenomenal fidelity, respect, intelligence and sensitivity. The respect for the orchestral timbres, the fidelity to the spirit and the letter of the score are exemplary. He respects the number of bars and makes no additions to the original work. Even in the use of tremolos – which are one of his trademarks and can sometimes appear flashy – Liszt shows himself to be extremely sober. This actually gave Philippe and myself food for thought: was Liszt conscious that there was something potentially demonstrative and over the top in the idea of the tremolo? At first we wondered if it would be in our interest to prolong some sustained notes (played by strings or wind in the original score) by adding tremolos when the sound seemed to disappear too quickly. But as our work progressed, we abandoned the idea. Often, when you’re playing transcriptions, you feel you want to give yourself greater latitude by modifying a few details (for example, by adding a lower octave that might seem justified, or a voice the transcriber left out). In the case of this one, which was made with such respect, our goal was to remain as faithful as possible to Liszt, to take his transcription very seriously and not to add our own ideas to it. Andwhile this score therefore contains no invention from Liszt’s own hand, one nevertheless finds in his division of the material between the pianos, the way he transfers a motif from one instrument to the other, an intelligence that is the hallmark of his genius as a transcriber.