Liszt Christmas Tree
Martha Argerich & Daniel Barenboim
Musical Performance Duo / Piano 0Franz Liszt’s Weihnachtsbaum (“Christmas Tree”), a charming collection of 12 piano miniatures inspired by traditional Christmas carols and other holiday-themed images, was written for the composer’s granddaughter Daniela. The suite brings together a multitude of musical ideas, from a depiction of the shepherds at the manger to a lullaby to the sound of evening bells. Liszt held back on his notorious virtuosity in this work, enabling Daniela, a talented young pianist, to give the first performance herself on Christmas Day 1881. Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim presented the cycle at the Pierre Boulez Saal for an enthusiastic young audience in 2017.
Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
Weihnachtsbaum (“Christmas Tree”) S 613
for Piano Four Hands (1874-81)
I. Psallite. Old Christmas Carol
II. O Holy Night! Christmas Carol in Olden Style
III. The Shepherds at the Manger. In dulci jubilo
IV. Adeste fideles. March of the Three Magi
V. Scherzoso. Lighting the Candles on the Tree
VI. Carillon
VII. Lullaby
VIII. Old Provençal Christmas Carol
IX. Evening Bells
X. Old Times
XI. Hungarian (Magyar)
XII. Polish (Mazurka)
Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Piano
In the 19th century—before the advent of recordings, radio and television—music was a local event. People played instruments or sang at home and in local groups. There were concerts by professional musicians, but most people who wanted to hear music, especially those who lived outside major cities, made it themselves. As the middle class grew and became more affluent, the almost ubiquitous piano was often a family’s prized possession. Children taking lessons was a sign they were well-bred and the family was a solid member of the community. Piano duets became increasingly popular, not only because two players could perform at once, but also four hands playing the piano rather than two gave the instrument richer sonorities. While some composers wrote original music for piano duets (Schubert excelled in the genre) there was a huge market for piano transcriptions of orchestral music and operatic numbers. Many people who never heard a professional orchestra play a Beethoven symphony knew the music in its piano duet form. One of the composers who fed this appetite for music-making was Franz Liszt, who wrote hundreds of pieces for piano. Some of it was music of staggering technical difficulty, works with which he dazzled his own audiences. But some, like his Weihnachtsbaum (“Christmas Tree”), was for family music-making, and Liszt designed a few of its 12 numbers so that even a younger child could play them, and shine at a family holiday gathering. The piece, written and revised between 1874 and 1881, exists in both a two-hand and a four-hand version and is dedicated to Liszt’s first grandchild, Daniela von Bülow. Born in 1860, she was the daughter of Liszt’s star pupil, the famous conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow, and Liszt’s second daughter Cosima, who left her husband for Richard Wagner when Daniela was a child.
According to Cosima’s biographer Oliver Hilmes, Daniela was a brilliant pianist, but there was no question of her utilizing her gifts professionally: “Cosima could not imagine her daughters receiving a professional training or pursuing an artistic career, however obvious such a calling might have been. ‘I do not consider it possible for a woman to live a public life and at the same time fulfill her feminine duties,’” he quotes her saying. But Daniela did play the first performance of Weihnachtsbaum in a hotel room in Rome as a present for her grandfather on Christmas Day, 1881. Its first nine numbers are either settings of various Christmas songs or depict things relating to the holiday, like the fifth piece, “Scherzoso—Lighting the Christmas Tree,” and numbers six and nine, “Carillon” and “Evening Bells.” The last three are secular and believed to be more personal for Liszt: the waltz “Ehemals” (Old Times) recalls the first meeting of Liszt (number 11, “Hungarian”) and his companion Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein (number 12, “Polish”). The composer created the enchanting piece in both solo and piano duet versions and later scored the second number (“O Holy Night!”) for tenor solo, female chorus, and organ. After his death others have arranged parts of the work for a variety of instruments, even for an entire orchestra.
—Paul Thomason
Notes originally published in the Pierre Boulez Saal program book for the concerts with Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim on December 23 and 25, 2017.
Piano
Daniel Barenboim
Martha Argerich
Audio Producer
Friedemann Engelbrecht
Sound
Julian Schwenkner
Video Technicians
Markus Genge
Piet Grotelüschen
Camera
Michael Boomers (DOP)
Thomas Falk
Winfried Hermann
Martin Roth
Volker Striemer
Jan Lehmann
Lighting Technician
Oliver Kühns
Editor
Peter Klum
Unit Manager
Valentina Schneck
Head of Production Salve TV
Karl-Martin Lötsch
UNITEL
Video Director
Eric Schulz
Producer
Magdalena Herbst
Production Manager
Franziska Pascher
Post-Production Manager
Roger Voß