John Ogdon
The Mephisto Waltz
& other “satanic” piano music of
Franz Liszt
Satanism—with its devil worship, Black Masses, and pagan fertility rites—
sprang up and became widespread throughout Europe during the Middle
Ages, as a revolt against the then harsh austerities of the Christian
church. For centuries thereafter, the church retaliated by making bon-
fires of the Satanists, whenever it could catch them. Yet Satanism has
persisted, some say, undiminished though underground, to our very
own day.
In the late Sixties, the book and movie “Rosemary's Baby” focussed
attention anew upon Satanism. This was followed, in 1969, by publi-
cation of Fred Mustard Stewart's novel “The Mephisto Waltz,” an eerie
story of sorcery, Satanism and transmigration of souls. Now, still later,
comes the motion picture “The Mephisto Waltz,’ based on the Stew-
art book, to chill the public’s hackles once again with the shivery chal-
lenges of the supernatural.
Heard throughout the film is Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, as an
identifying theme for the character of Duncan Ely, concert pianist and
devil worshiper. Liszt, of course, wrote five pieces titled “Mephisto’’—
four waltzes and a polka. The Mephisto Waltz No. 1, which he composed
in two versions, one for orchestra and the other for solo piano, is the
most often played. The No. 3, also heard in this recording, was com-
posed specifically for piano, and vies with the No. 1 for popularity. He
composed in addition a sizable body of other works which seem dia-
bolically inspired,
Liszt himself was often described as Mephistophelean. Showman that
he was, he did nothing deliberately to discourage the description. His
devout, lifelong adherence to Catholicism, however, would have pre-
cluded his manifesting anything more than an intellectual curiosity about
Satanism. Indeed, Liszt took minor orders in the Catholic Church in
1865, retired from the world for four years during which he lived for a
time in the Vatican, and for the rest of his life wore the black robes of an
Abbé. He was predominately a gentle and generous man. More than
once, when short of funds himself, he donated the entire proceeds of a
concert to a needy charity. The fellow composers whom he selflessly
championed, often at the expense of his own work, included Chopin,
Schumann, Berlioz and Wagner, as well as many of lesser fame. His
piano students’ pride in him and devotion to him shines forth from the
numerous photographs in which he posed with them in his last years.
So seraphic was his treatment of them, they regarded him as a saint.
Yet saint he was not. And, certainly, for past generations of Sunday
supplement writers seeking sensational material, there were throughout
Liszt's life evidences that he was, if not a Satanist, certainly more than
a little of a devil. These colorful facts have often been cited:
He was born in 1811, the year of the great comet. The comet's tail is
said to have pointed straight at the Liszt home near the Austro-Hungarian
border on the night Liszt came into the world. He grew up with the
sound of gypsy music in his ears. He was a sickly child, prone to cata-
leptic seizures. As a youth, the thwarting of his first great love affair by
the young lady’s indignant father caused Franz to suffer a nervous break-
down from which he was two years in recovering. During this time, it
was reported throughout Europe that he had died. His obituary notice
was printed in Etoile, and a memorial print of his likeness went on sale
in all the capital cities.
Yet he returned, mysteriously, to life and to a greater fame than ever.
At 20, a profound influence was exerted upon him by the sardonic
violin virtuoso and composer Niccolo Paganini, whom even sober-
minded persons of the age believed to have been under the tutorship
of the devil. The example of this wild genius inspired Liszt to renewed
efforts at total mastery of his own instrument, and taught him as well,
the commercial rewards of playing the diabolist role.
Liszt’s favorite works of literature, he let it be known, were Goethe's
“Faust” and “The Divine Comedy” of Dante.
Liszt's love affairs scandalized the world on a scale not surpassed until
the romances of a famous screen actress of our own time. His conquests
were legion, and brought notoriety to a succession of countesses, prin-
cesses and other well-placed ladies who forsook husbands, homes, chil-
dren and reputations for him. They also included such already notorious
figures as the famous courtesan Lola Montez and the cigar-smoking
lady novelist and sometime consort of Chopin, George Sand. Liszt seems
to have treated them all with gallantry and tenderness, although he was
forced, at the conclusion of his affair with Lola Montez, to lock the lady
in her hotel room for a day while he fled from her, paying in advance
for the furnishings he knew she would smash during her confinement.
When he was sixty and wearing the robes of the church, a 19-year-old
countess with whom he had severed relations, took a gun to his apart-
ments to shoot him and end her own life. Happily, she failed of both
purposes.
There was, too, something supernatural in Liszt’s performing. Pro-
digiously talented from childhood, he became the greatest pianist of his
age and, many musicologists still aver, the greatest who has yet ap-
peared. With slender figure, patrician features, and an impressive aureole
of hair that became snow-white in his later years, he was fascinating to
behold. At one moment, he could reduce an audience of both men and
women to tears with the delicacy of his diminuendos, and then frighten
them out of their wits with terrifying crescendos the next. Liszt was the
first musician to present the solo performance, with no other player
sharing the stage, now known as the “recital.” He was the first to do
such an evening entirely of his own works. And he was the first to per-
form his entire program from memory.
There is, finally to be considered, the evidence of Liszt's music—a
preoccupation, surely, with the diabolical, from his Totentanz, his
Faust Symphony, and his Dante Symphony, to his transcription for
piano of Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique,to the numerous shorter works
including those pieces for the piano performed by John Ogdon here.
SIDE ONE (25:30)
MEPHISTO WALTZ NO. 1
(“The Dance at the Inn” from Lenau’s “Faust’’)
(Band 1. 11:05)
Wrote Sacheverell Sitwell in his biographical study “Liszt” (Philosophical
Library Inc., New York, 1956): “The Mephisto Waltz puts the powers of
evil on toa plane from which they have been for too long dispossessed.
The very tone of the music is haunted and evil.” It was composed in
1860 in both an orchestral version, as one of “Two Episodes from Lenau’s
Faust,” and the piano version heard here. In Lenau’s long dramatic poem,
Faust and Mephistopheles enter a village inn where a marriage feast is
in progress. Faust is attracted by a beautiful dark-haired girl, but dares
not approach her. Then Mephistopheles seizes a fiddle and strikes up a
wild dance which turns the feast into an orgy. All restraints dissipated
by the music, Faust dances out into the night with the girl and, as the
FOnmO etna ninhtinwalede heardeachieure miecdesirenciteher:
FUNERAILLES
(No. 7 of “Harmonies poétiques et religieuses’’)
(Band 2 (10:05)
Like the Mephisto Waltz No. 1, Funérailles is one of Liszt's undoubted
masterpieces, and like it also, it dates from the era of his greatest pro-
ductivity, the Weimar period (1848-61) when he not only composed
much of his finest music and wrote numerous essays on music, but was
deeply involved in the production of challenging new works (including
the early operas of Wagner) for the Weimar theater. One of twelve
pieces from the collection “Harmonies poétiques et religieuses,” Funé-
railles is a heroic elegy to the thirteen martyrs of the unsuccessful Hun-
garian War of Independence of 1848-49, including his friend Count
Lajos Batthanyi, who were executed following their capitulation to the
Czar. The middle section of the work, with its trumpet calls and gallop-
ing octaves, is especially stirring.
ETUDE D’EXECUTION TRANSCENDANTE
D’APRES PAGANINI, G.140 No, 2
(Band 3. 4:10) .
Not only Liszt, but Schumann and Brahms, were so challenged by the
technical experiments and effects of Paganini that they endeavored to
transfer them from the violin to the piano. Liszt’s are perhaps the most
successful and remarkable, but his “Etudes d’execution transcendante
d'aprés Paganini” of 1838 were so bristling with difficulties that only
Liszt could play them. In 1851 he published the revised and simplified
version in which they are generally known today. No. 3 was from the
second movement of Paganini’s second violin concerto, but the other
five, including No. 2, were from the Capricci published by Paganini in
1830. The No. 2 is often alluded to as the Octave study, its middle sec-
tion having been composed by Paganini as a study in rapid octave
niavitias
SIDE TWO (25:30)
CZARDAS MACABRE
(Band 1 6:20)
Written largely in bare parallel fifths, and rising at the conclusion to a
violent climax, this work is uncharacteristic for its period, for Liszt wrote
it in the last years of his life when his composing was more introspec-
tive and less pyrotechnical. It dates from 1881-1882, and was first pub-
lished in 1951 by the English Liszt Society from a MS in the British
Museum. This was incomplete in some places, and the missing passages
were supplied from a four-hand version, corrected by Liszt himself,
which is in the Liszt Museum at Weimar.
EN REVE (Nocturne)
(Band 2 2:30)
Writes Humphrey Searle: “This little piece was written in the winter of
1885, only a few months before Liszt's death, and is dedicated to ‘his
young friend August Stradal,’ one of Liszt’s last pupils. It is a quiet and
charming piece, with some remarkable harmonic effects, and is very
Rica Grike muste on lice last year
STEREO
S.60170
TRAUVER-VORSPIEL UND TRAUER-MARSCH
(Band 3 7:50)
Like En Réve, the Funeral Prelude and March dates from 1885 and is an
example of Liszt's extreme harmonic experimentation. Writes Searle:
“The Prelude is based on whole-tone harmony over a chromatically
descending bass figure; the March begins with a four-note theme, F
sharp, G, B flat, C sharp, which acts as an ostinato throughout, and all
sorts of other harmonies appear on top of it, sometimes in a very disso-
nant manner. After a climax is reached, a short, quieter section soon
gives way to a violent restatement of the four-note theme which ends
the piece.”
MEPHISTO WALTZ NO. 3
(Band 4 8:35)
The Third Mephisto Waltz also was composed in 1885, some 25 years
after the First. Unlike the First it was composed solely for piano, al-
though it was subsequently orchestrated by Liszt’s pupil Reisenauer.
One of the most important works of Liszt's old age, it is turbulent and
violent throughout, representing him at his most ruthless and savage.
—korv Guy
John Ogdon, who was born in England in 1937, began his professional
career when, as a student, he played the Brahms D minor Concerto
under Sir John Barbirolli in 1956. In 1958 he made his professional con-
cert debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, playing the
Busoni Piano Concerto. In 1959 he was awarded Second Prize in the
Liverpool International Piano Concerto Competition. In 1960 he made
his first appearances at the Royal Festival Hall, the Cheltenham Festival
(at which he premiéred his “Variations and Fugue’) and the Spoleto
Festival. The following year he was awarded the Franz Liszt Prize in
London, and appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, Spoleto, and at the
opening night of the Proms in London.
In 1962 John Ogdon won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
During the last few years he has undertaken numerous tours including
three concert tours of the USA and two of the USSR. In 1964 he toured
Australia, New Zealand and the Far East, and in 1965 gave a series of
concerts with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Besides his many concert engagements and recordings, John Ogdon
finds time to compose, and since 1968 has participated as Artistic Di-
rector in the Cardiff Festival of 20th Century Music.
MORE RECORDINGS BY JOHN OGDON
On Seraphim:
LISZT & BUSONI IMPROVISATIONS. Mozart-Liszt: Reminiscences of
“Don Giovanni”; Verdi-Liszt: Reminiscences of “Simon Boccanegra”;
Busoni: Sonatina No. 6; Nine Variations on a Chopin Prelude; Tur-
andot’s Boudoir. S-60088
On Angel:
BUSONI: PIANO CONCERTO, OP. 39; SARABANDE AND CORTEGE
FROM “DOKTOR FAUST.” With the John Alldis Choir, the Royal Phil-
harmonic Orchestra; Daniell Revenaugh conducting.
(Two discs) SBL-3719
ELGAR: QUINTET IN A MINOR: CONCERT ALLEGRO; SONATINA;
ADIEU; SERENADE. With the Allegri Quartet (for the Quintet).
$-36686
TCHAIKOVSKY: CONCERTO NO. 1 IN B FLAT MINOR, OP. 23; FRANCK:
VARIATIONS SYMPHONIQUES. With the Philharmonia Orchestra; Sir
John Barbirolli conducting. S-36142
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