Weekend Concert Series: Christopher Taylor CANCELLED

PROGRAM

Ludwig van Beethoven (arr. Franz Liszt), Symphony No. 3, Eroica (1803, arr. 1864)
Ludwig van Beethoven (arr. Franz Liszt), Symphony No. 4 (1806, arr. 1864)

Isabella Stewart Gardner idolized Beethoven. The life mask of the composer (below) is still on view at her Museum. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, pianist Christopher Taylor will scale the Everest of piano literature, works Vladimir Horowitz called simply “the greatest works for the piano.”

Christopher Taylor’s historic survey of Liszt’s Beethoven symphony transcriptions takes on the titanic Eroica and its gentler, but no less revolutionary cousin, the Fourth, which Robert Schumann described as “a slender Grecian maiden between two Nordic giants” (i.e. the Third and Fifth symphonies). These transcriptions are masterpieces in themselves, and ideal chances to hear this music as if for the first time.

She was also a great admirer of Liszt, and was in fact travelling to meet with him when he died suddenly. Gardner attended his funeral, supported his grieving family, and cast the first shovel of earth onto his coffin. These astounding transcriptions by Liszt are not fantasias on the original material but rather scrupulously faithful avatars of Beethoven’s original scores. They provide a laser-sharp look inside the workings of the music, illuminating their structures as if lit from within. This is the ideal way to hear Beethoven’s seismic masterworks in a completely fresh way.