Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1850s

OK, that symphony (Fischer recording) was great on first casual listen and is a serious contender (although the Années... from this decade also v good). If we're comparing to Wagner, I actually like getting lost in 3-4h of gelatinous vocal melodrama in a language I don't understand is the thing, but, as a symphony, that was a fantastic work.

Liszt can be very uneven but the Faust Symphony is top drawer material. His orchestration of From the Cradle to the Grave is excellent as well (but I'm getting ahead of myself).

yes i think it's actually the only thing i like by him

You dislike his austere & mournful late works?

(Unless you were specifically referring to From the Cradle to the Grave).

wasn't very clear there -- there's a lot by him i've never heard, i like faust much more than whatever else i have heard

(and mostly heard a long time ago, so my mind is probably very changeable these days on stuff i disliked in my 20s)

Then I hope you'll give him a second chance once we reach the 1880s.

i'll make a liszt list encompassing all his eras once we get to the 1880s and try to keep it short

So Liszt's very first published work was *his* variation on that theme of Diabelli's. Interesting.

I'm enjoying spending quality time with his solo piano works, not least Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. I think the only Liszt I'd have previously said I know 'well' amounted to a few discs of tone poems, etc. (Shocking confession #647959)

Harmonies Poetiques is an awesome cycle. The benediction gets all the air time but pensees des morts is probably the highlight. I love the opening invocation as well. Brendel did not record the whole cycle but he did most of it and that’s probably my favorite recording of these pieces. Along with a late (1980s) Richter performance of pensees des morts which I assume is in print somewhere.

Don't forget Funérailles! I love them all, though, including his rewriting of Allegri's Miserere.

(adding: my youthful stance on liszt may well have been coloured by roger daltrey's portrayal of same, and the fact that i encountered said portrayal in a seaside cinema WITH MY PARENTS AND SISTER)

It is understandable, roger daltrey is gross

I haven't seen said film but was made aware of its inflammatory reputation at a young age, and it rubbed off on the conception I developed of its subject, whose music I subsequently discovered through the 1st Piano Concerto and its more flagrant bravura passages (I knew nothing of cyclical form at the time). Then I came across Nuages gris, La lugubre gondola, Unstern! Sinistre, disastro and RW – Venezia, all of which sounded like sealed-off mausoleums, to be reverberated into nothingness, completely overturning my vitalist understanding of his music in the process.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I suppose the turnout was to be expected. I wonder who voted for Brahms's 1st Piano Trio? Good piece, that.

That Brahms trio and the Brahms first concerto are both totally plausible choices

His third piano sonata kicks ass too, a young man’s Hammerklavier sonata of sorts