Liszt Prize and multiple Artisjus Awards winning Gábor Eckhardt’s concert programs are always guided by some underlying thematic principle that sheds new light on the compositions in question. This time, tailored to the namesake of the Liszt Museum, the focus is on Ferenc Liszt and his inspirations. The matinee concert opens with perhaps one of Beethoven’s most popular piano sonatas, the dramatic and passionate “Pathétique” Sonata, followed by a Liszt transcription of a Beethoven composition. The church songs composed to the poems of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert are performed as piano pieces that are at times solemn, at times devout and intimate. Next, four of Bach’s two- and three-part inventions are performed in chromatically ascending keys. Closely tied to this organizational principle, the concert concludes with a Bach transcription by Liszt, based on the chromatic passacaglia theme from the cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen and the Crucifixus of the Mass in B minor. The theme begins with precisely the same four notes that Gábor Eckhardt chose for the Bach movements. Franz Liszt wrote this piece—which begins painfully but ends in religious exaltation—while mourning his eldest daughter, thus bringing the message of Easter to the audience around this time as well.
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 (’Pathétique’)
Liszt: Sechs geistliche Lieder
J. S. Bach: Sinfonia in D minor (Three-part Invention), BWV 790
J. S. Bach: Sinfonia in E-flat major (Three-part Invention), BWV 791
J. S. Bach: Two-part invention in E major, BWV 777
J. S. Bach: Sinfonia in F minor (Three-part Invention), BWV 795
Liszt: Variations on a Basso Continuo from the Cantata ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’
Presented by: Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre