Liszt: Faust Symphony (SACD)

Few literary works had such a strong influence on European culture in the 19th century as Goethe's "Faust". Several important composers were inspired by it, and Franz Liszt seems to have had a particularly close relationship with Goethe's masterpiece. He had the idea of a symphony "in three characteristic pictures", each dedicated to a key character in the play: Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. Instead of telling the story of the play, Liszt composed a psychogram of these three main characters. He was also a pioneer in the use of leitmotifs, i.e. short musical ideas that emphasize a character trait or evoke feelings, a process that his future son-in-law Richard Wagner was to develop even further in his operas. The Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, conducted by Gergely Madaras, presents the original, purely instrumental version of the Faust Symphony from 1854. This gigantic work is complemented by the first of the Mephisto Waltzes, inspired by Nikolaus Lenau's vision of the Faust myth. These two works offer two very different perspectives on Liszt's intense relationship with the figure of Faust and in particular that of Mephistopheles, around whom many of his compositions are structured. They are key works for understanding Liszt's aesthetic project and the typical 19th century tendency to combine the arts.