The Paper's reporter Liao Yang intern Wang Ting
Liszt and Schubert are both representative figures of the Romantic period, but in the history of music, there is probably no farther distance between The fates of Liszt and Schubert.
In this year's solo concert tour, pianist Zhang Haochen chose to juxtapose the two.
From 16 April to 20 June, to mark the 210th anniversary of Liszt's birth, Zhang Haochen performed Liszt's Twelve Super-Technical Etudes, known as the "Feast of Skills", and selected Schubert's Allegro in C minor and Piano Sonata in G major as another highlight of the recital.
The tour is divided into two stages, lasting 31 days, spanning 16 cities in China, which is Zhang Haochen's longest personal duration and the most traveled to the city.
As a pianist and composer, Liszt has an unparalleled position in the history of music. He actively explored piano playing techniques, greatly increasing the upper limit of piano playing skills. His Twelve Super-Elydes, composed at the age of 15, remain the pinnacle of piano technique, filled with intense, bizarre contrasts and kaleidoscopic acoustics and color variations.
Schubert, known as the "King of Art Songs", composes piano works that are comparable to his art songs in terms of quantity and artistic level. Among them, "Piano Sonata in G major" is not only Zhang Haochen's favorite Schubert piano sonata, but also a work that pianists believe best represent Schubert's simple and sincere and noble introspective spirit.
Like to read, like philosophy, like to think, Zhang Haochen has a unique understanding of Liszt and Schubert, listen to what he said at the tour conference.
Zhang Haochen
【Readme】
When I think of Liszt's work, the first thing that comes to mind is the Twelve Extraordinary Etudes, a masterpiece in the history of piano technique. In my opinion, no one digs more thoroughly than Liszt in terms of the meaning that the technique and the technique points to.
Looking through Liszt's manuscripts, it can be found that many of his manuscripts were very simple at the beginning, and after twenty or thirty years, the melody has hardly changed, only the technique. But why did he improve these techniques, did he want to make it harder? Actually, no, we will find that some versions of the technique are more difficult than the current version. If we look at these different versions of the technique alone, we will find a law, Liszt ultimately pursues not skill, not showmanship, but how to reflect the most special and unique instrument can reflect the acoustic color, acoustic effects. Acoustics can point to all sorts of imaginations, as well as poetic stretches, which is the ultimate goal of Twelve Super eloquents.
One of the most famous "Ghost Fires" in the "Twelve Super-Technical Etudes" was a pioneering work of the time. Looking at Liszt's manuscript when he was fifteen or sixteen years old, you can see that the melody of the same song as the original children's song is almost exactly the same, but he finally adapted it into "Ghost Fire". He creates in this way. He deliberately adapted the repertoire for ten minutes, adapting a large number of works by Schubert and Chopin, and what he pursued was not skill, but how to develop a unique and irreplaceable acoustic color from the instrument.
Before the Romantics, everyone used musical instruments to apply sound, and music itself had its absolute laws, such as Bach's works can be played on various instruments. But from the romantics, everything was turned upside down, and the composer could start composing with an instrument, and this piece only fits the instrument. And no one has done this more thoroughly than Liszt. Even though Chopin and Schumann began to use instruments on the surface of so-called pure music, and began to study the unique timbre of some instruments, almost only Liszt was absolutely based on the color of the instrument to compose his music, and this color was for the audience, for the concert.
Therefore, Liszt is the first person in the history of playing in the true sense of the word. It is not that he was the first to perform publicly, but that he was the first to really bring the concept of playing into the concept of creation. When he creates the deepest and most heartfelt passages and works, the audience still exists, and he always has an object, and this object is not one person, not two people, not the love in his heart, but a large audience. So at this point, his avant-garde is in an irreplaceable position in the history of music.
Liszt was often "stigmatized". Most people have the impression of him, either as a showman, or as a playboy, countless girls fell in front of his tall and handsome image, which is such a symbol. But in fact, behind this symbol, everyone ignores what Liszt really wants to do, not for the sake of difficulty, not for the sake of dazzling.
In October 2019, Zhang Haochen gave a piano solo concert
So why would I think of Schubert? I think in the whole history of Western music, there is probably no greater distance between the fate of composers than these two people. Unlike Liszt, who enjoyed all his glory and wealth in his life and had a good old age, Schubert's fate was bumpy, poor, displaced, and died young.
In the last part of his life, he continued to write letters to publishers. The first draft of Schubert's "Great" symphony was dedicated to the Vienna Music Society, but no reply was received. Schubert also sent goethe a collection of art songs in various ways, recommending his works to him, hoping that Goethe would give some advice. But Goethe did not know him, and on the same day that the score arrived at Goethe's house, Mendelssohn wrote a sheet music to Goethe, and Goethe replied to Mendelssohn with great enthusiasm, while Schubert's score Goethe never opened, which is a very interesting contrast.
Schubert's fate influenced his creation, and it was precisely because he was not very good at fighting for fame and fortune and did not have enough social skills that he developed a small audience of "Schubert's circle". Schubert's audience and Liszt's audience are completely different, and this qualitative way of sharing music will inevitably affect Schubert's creation. Schubert's state of mind is very private, his music has no public consciousness, it is completely private.
I don't think there is anything farther away from these two people, both in terms of fate and in terms of the spiritual connotation of music. Although both men are romantic, the age difference is not very large, but the spirit of music is completely polar.
The Piano Sonata in G major is the earliest of Schubert's four late sonatas, followed by three more famous in the year of his death (1828). But it's exactly my personal favorite, because it's Schubert's most personal piece. Not only do I think so, but so does my favorite composer, Schumann.
Why do you say "most personal"? This may have to go into the historical context of the time, where Schubert was a man between classical and romantic. We often say that Beethoven is a person between classical and romantic, but in fact, it is not, Beethoven may have inspired romance, but his own composition of the intention, the real musical core, is absolutely classical.
Schubert is not purely classical or romantic. Schubert was famous in Vienna with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, while Schubert was confined to a small circle and grew up in the shadow of the three giants. At the same time, in that era, everyone had begun to enter a romantic context, and the first generation of romantics wanted to create sonatas, because the sonatas were too successful, the intentions were too great, representing giants like Mozart and Beethoven.
So a lot of Schubert's sonatas, you can see such an ambiguity in the middle of the two poles. On the one hand, he has a romantic feeling of his own. On the other hand, he applied the classical techniques he had learned to his sonatas—because at that time the sonatas had a tendency to be absolutely classical, so you could see Schubert's sonatas, even the other three of the late ones, though so private, but in some places clearly influenced by Beethoven. Although it is not necessary, in order to follow the situation, he will install a grand ending, and in part he is subject to the influence of the giants, the influence of the classics.
But only in piano sonatas in G major did I see all Schubert talking to himself. The reason is strange, I don't know, but he is naturally only himself, and at the same time able to magically merge the romantic self into a classical form like the sonata. That's why Schumann said that, both in form and technique, the Piano Sonata in G major was Schubert's most perfect sonata. For this reason, I want to play this work.
In a way, I don't think the whole Romantic school can jump out of Beethoven's shadow. The most obvious examples are not Liszt and Schubert, but of course Wagner and Brahms. But it's hard for me to define the extent to which Liszt inherited Beethoven, and in many places we don't see a direct impact. Liszt once played Beethoven's Sonata in C major, at least in terms of composition technique, Beethoven's most famous piano sonata, the first public performance of Liszt, it is difficult to imagine that Liszt played it completely according to the score.
In July 2020, Yang Yang, Zhang Haochen and the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor.
I think of another example, the work of Liszt Bach. One of the viewers said he was completely rammed, and Liszt said, "Probably, so we're playing it as you want now, how do you want to play?" The man said to play in the style of Bach's period, and Liszt played it again, and the man said that it was very similar, and it is conceivable that he may have played Beethoven's works in the same way at that time. Then Liszt played it a second time, according to his personal taste, it was indeed not so pure, adding some of his own thoughts and ideas, but the difference was not very big. Then Liszt played a third time, the third time only for the audience, not for himself or for Bach.
So, Liszt is a very complex person, I can't define him simply, he has a very deep understanding of the score, he also knows what kind of music is the purest, and what kind of relationship he should have with music. But when he turned his perspective and faced the audience, he didn't think about it, the work was secondary to him, and more importantly, how he could make the sound reflect something that no one had heard before. So, I think this is Liszt's irreplaceable contribution.
But this does not mean that Liszt is a superficial person, he has a very deep humanistic background. Liszt's sonatas draw their roots from medieval mythology and theological concepts and then integrate them into music. In my opinion, among the first generation of composers of the Romantics, Liszt had the deepest literary background and was at the same time a very devout believer. In his case, both literary and religious nature became musical imaginations. So, we can't look at Liszt from a contemporary perspective as simply sensationalism, and his contribution is to bring something other than music to music. Before him, Mozart and Beethoven were all working on music itself, and Liszt was the first to take something other than music as a subject and let music show it.
The charm of music is that as a person changes over time and his mood changes, his feelings about listening to music will also change. Listening to the same piece of music in different times and spaces will feel differently, sometimes better than I thought, bringing me novelty, and sometimes disappointing. This is especially true as a performer, all the processing will be different, for example, after this one today, after two days of three or four performances, I feel that I have to do a process, sometimes it may be spontaneous, sometimes it may be deliberate.
You just asked what the proportion of the self is, and I can't think about it, when you are playing, when you think about the proportion of the self, you are already overly self-conscious, and when this idea pays some kind of practice, in any case you have begun to deliberately. As long as you are playing the piano, your proportion is always there, and it is indelible. For example, if you play Schubert's work, Schubert is indelible, and both exist. So how to define this proportion? It is mysterious, a mysterious experience for both the player and the listener. We can't say that this sound goes down, and the audience gets a certain kind of resonance, how much is because of the sounds of the work itself, and how much is because I play it. Fortunately, we can't tell the difference, and if we do, our performance will be boring.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai