# Was Franz Liszt the best transcriber in classical music



## Felix Mendelssohn (Jan 18, 2019)

I listened to Katsaris' recording of the Beethoven-Liszt symphonies, and was floored by how Liszt managed to make the piano sound like an orchestra, without losing the details. Then I listened to his Schubert and Wagner transcriptions, and they were amazing. 

So how good was Liszt's transcriptions, id you compare him to other composers?


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I can't say whether he was the best (he may well have been), but he was certainly one of the most extensive. It would have been interesting to see how he would have tackled Bruckner for the piano. Pity it didn't happen.

His piano transcriptions of Schubert are an improvement.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

My favorite Liszt transcription:


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

I don't think there's really much competition? 

Or is there?

Most composers are mainly into their own stuff I guess. Unlike other geniuses Liszt was modest enough to spent time to transcribe music of other composers to bring their music under attention and spread it around.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Imagine what Liszt could do today for pop music. He could make it all better by transcribing it for piano. 

Widmung is one of my favorites as well. But not when played like that... Here's Kissin.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Liszt lived in a time when some of the middle class and much of the aristocracy in Europe had pianos in their homes. While most could not afford to hire an orchestra one way to perform music was to do so on the piano or piano two hands. So he set out to accommodate them and spread the knowledge of modern composition.

He did this while composing about 800 of his own pieces of music and playing often to full houses and godlike worship.

I doubt anyone else could have accomplished this.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Felix Mendelssohn said:


> I listened to Katsaris' recording of the Beethoven-Liszt symphonies, and was floored by how Liszt managed to make the piano sound like an orchestra, without losing the details.


When Gould recorded the Beethoven/Liszt 5th symphony he overplayed two tapes, saying that it needed four hands at the end to make all the details audible. I don't know what Katsaris does.



Felix Mendelssohn said:


> Then I listened to his Schubert and Wagner transcriptions, and they were amazing.


The big Liszt transcription I know best is the Symphonie Fantastique, which has had some pretty good recorded performances. And yes the Schubert songs have had some nice performances too.



Felix Mendelssohn said:


> So how good was Liszt's transcriptions, id you compare him to other composers?


The Liszt transcriptions are literal, and sometimes he runs into problems because, obviously the piano doesn't sustain like an orchestral instrument, so you get tremolo. You might like to compare Liszt's style with Gould's, especially the Siegfried Idyll. Mikhail Rudy's Wagner transcriptions too. Or even Earl Wild's Rachmaninov transcriptions.


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## Guest (Mar 11, 2019)

DeepR said:


> Imagine what Liszt could do today for pop music.


He would make an amazing ''cover artist''.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

I'd only heard one of these, the Pastorale, in the rom-com Impromptu where he and Chopin play it as a duet while staying at some countess' country house. Listening through to the samples on Amazon for the CD the OP described, wow. They really do retain the character of the symphonies. My respect for Liszt grows and grows, though I'm still not too big a fan of much of his music. He was definitely a master orchestrator for the piano.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

He was good... and as the serious student that he was who always wanted to improve himself, I imagine that he learned a great deal from doing those awesome and time-consuming transcriptions. He had the pianistic power to bring those Beethoven transcriptions to live. To have heard him live would have probably raised the roof.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The man was a phenomenon. Liszt's own output is lengthy enough but the quantity of arrangements he made on top of that is staggering, and I've yet to hear one I didn't like. He must have been a voracious listener of other people's work to make him want to transcribe so much of it. Add to that his other activities - it beggars belief how he found time for it all.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I can't judge but if not the best then he's definitely among the best in history, along with Godowsky, Busoni and Grainger. In transcribing music by others, Liszt was just as imaginative as he was in his original works. Liszt baulked at transcribing Beethoven's 9th symphony with its combination of orchestra, choir and soloists. I don't see him as being in Beethoven's shadow as much as Brahms, but no doubt he wanted to do justice to this masterpiece. Pianist Leslie Howard, an expert in the field, has said that Liszt's transcriptions where adventurous for the period, using odd harmonies to effectively render the huge scale of these works on the piano alone. Perhaps it could be said that those who created similarly ambitious transcriptions would have Liszt as their touchstone?


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## ojoncas (Jan 3, 2019)

Stokowski is probably my favourite because of all the strenght he brings to Bach’s music. Basically is if Bach composed with Symphonic orchestras: How great is that!?

I only really like counterpoint and fugual parts on organ, the rest I dont enjoy as much... Stokowski makes a great job of transcribing lesser known Bach works.

For Chopin, I like Godowski’s take on his etudes, which aren’t so much of transcription but it’s in a similar idea, somewhat!


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