Liszt: Années de pèlerinage, Year 2 - Italy, S.161 (Piemontesi, Gorus)

Compared to Year 1, the second book of the Années de pèlerinage is less focused on textural intricacy, more lyrically concentrated – the three Petrarch sonnets, the centerpiece of the set, all contain stunning melodies which integrate harmonic colour in really fun ways. Book II’s works are also considerably more expansive: only one of them can be called a miniature, and this book’s counterpart to Year 1’s Vallee de Obermann, the Dante Sonata, is also correspondingly more ambitious and sweeping in scope (it gets its separate video, so don’t worry that it isn’t here!). Even the opening work, Sposalizio, features a good deal of thematic transformation/combination, deployed to generate an air of (sometimes intimate, sometimes joyous) reverence.

Piemontesi is warm, melody-focused (especially in the sonnets), and exceptionally well-controlled. Gorus is neurotic in the best Horowitzian sense – so much unexpected detail leaps to the fore, so much playful & expressive extremity. A good example of the different approaches is the B section of Sposalizio (4:12; 40:00) – Piemontesi produces a lovely RH dolce and keeps the LH fairly measured, while Gorus gives the LH a fair bit of rubato (generally speeding up slowing down within the space of a bar). Gorus also lets the LH at the climax at Sonnet 104 (1:01:27) dramatically surge and retreat, while Piemontesi more clearly subordinates it to the melody. Another neat contrast is between their renditions of the Canzonetta – Piemontesi is lithe, rhythmically precise, and even a little funny, while Gorus is faster, looser with the dotted rhythms, more festive.

Both Piemontesi and Gorus have some spectacular voicings – at 1:02:00 in Sonnet 104 there’s the emergence of a beautiful lower line in the RH (you’ll miss this now whenever you hear a recording that doesn’t pull it out); and at 26:52 in the ending of the same work Piemontesi goes from emphasising the top to the bottom voice of the chain of descending thirds. In general, though, Gorus is much freer. Sometimes it’s in the way he lets the music come to nearly total halt (1:09:12 in Sonnet 123), anti-metrical, parlando phrasing (the first statement of Sonnet 104’s theme at 58:48), or even in small things like variation in the way arpeggios are placed (51:23 – the first three arpeggios three start on the beat, the fourth before).

Piemontesi
00:00 – Sposalizio
07:20 – Il Penseroso
12:15 – Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa
15:19 – Sonetto 47 del Petrarca
21:21 – Sonetto 104 del Petrarca
27:37 – Sonetto 123 del Petrarca

Gorus
34:54 – Sposalizio
43:30 – Il Penseroso
48:12 – Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa
51:08 – Sonetto 47 del Petrarca
58:11 – Sonetto 104 del Petrarca
1:05:38 – Sonetto 123 del Petrarca