Liszt: Années de pèlerinage, Year 1 - Switzerland, S.160 (Pace, Piemontesi)

The Annees de Pelerinage are testament (if it was needed!) to Liszt’s staggering abilities as a manipulator of sonority, texture, and harmony. The first book in particular features some of Liszt’s most concise, evocative writing – it’s remarkable the number of times he deploys textures here that he uses nowhere else, even as the set retains a generally anti-virtuoso character (compare e.g., the brillante extroversion of the Year 2 supplement). There’s a lot of tenderness and warmth in the writing here, embedded in figuration of crystalline intricacy and big washes of harmonic colour (+ approx. a billion chromatic mediant modulations). It’s unfortunate that individual works here (apart from Au bord d'une source) are not programmed more often, as the AdP is now widely recognised as one of the high points of Romantic piano writing.

Both Pace and Piemontesi boast fantastic gifts for articulation, colour and dynamic control, but deploy these to slightly different ends. Pace leans toward the atmospheric and lyrical, and is happy to dwell in the minutest variations in texture or rubato; Piemontesi is fiercer, faster, and gestural. For instance – both of them reduce the LH of Au lac du Wallenstadt to the barest murmur, but Pace phrases the LH non-literally, while Piemontesi keeps it perfectly steady and presents the melody semplice. In Eglogue, Pace takes a dreamy tempo and is at pains to distinguish between staccato and staccatissimo in the second theme 19:09 (m.26); Piemontesi’s faster tempo produces something more rustic and playful, but still laden with wonderful detail, such as the teasing apart of inner voices at 52:10 (m.14) or the melting passage at 53:56 (m.96 onward).

Pace is at his absolute best when performing works which call for the generation of very particular, unusual sonorities. In Chapelle de Guillame Tell he absolutely nails the middle section – the initial horns call at 1:23 (m.21) are given expressive agogic accents, and the echo effects starting from 1:52 (m.33, now without agogic accents) are strikingly audible. The outer sections also feature some very fine playing: the way the melody chords are voiced at 0:51 (m.13), or how at 3:05 (m.61) Pace arpeggiates through both RH/LH chords as if they are a single large chord. The absolute standout of Pace’s set, however, must be Au bord d’une source. The voicing here is exquisite – listen to how clearly the melody emerges at 10:31 (m.5) or 12:13 (m.33) despite dense inner textures. At 11:13 (m.17) the LH transforms into a transfixing harmonic glow supporting the sparking upper sonorities. Inner voices also come through beautifully: see the arpeggiated chords at 11:31 (m.57), or the inner appoggiaturas at 13:16 (m.57).

Piemontesi’s strengths are on full display when the music takes on an improvisatory air or builds in intensity – he’s got a real gift for shaping climaxes and generating ecstatic colour. His rendition of Orage is cataclysmic – see those menacing buildups at 47:49 and 49:54 (m.93), his dangerously fast but perfectly controlled LH octaves at (47:59; m.8), or the throbbing chromatic thirds at 48:32 (m.38). In the long, sustained buildup in the second half of Les cloches de Geneve Piemontesi is spectacular too – the articulation of the “quasi arpa” figuration from 1:02:50) (m.108) onward has a ringing, rhapsodic quality.

Pace
00:00 – 1. Chapelle de Guillaume Tell
05:28 – 2. Au lac de Wallenstadt
08:37 – 3. Pastorale
10:17 – 4. Au bord d’une source
14:17 – 5. Orage
18:23 – 7. Eglogue
22:01 – 8. Le mal du pays
27:52 – 9. Les cloches de Geneve

Piemontesi
33:53 – 1. Chapelle de Guillaume Tell
39:35 – 2. Au lac de Wallenstadt
42:15 – 3. Pastorale
43:47 – 4. Au bord d’une source
47:37 – 5. Orage
51:50 – 7. Eglogue
54:41 – 8. Le mal du pays
59:22 – 9. Les cloches de Geneve