LDV90

FLORIAN NOACK 17 It is, in a way, the fraternal deed of a man who so admired Liszt that he dedicated his life to continuing the older man’s work, to bringing it to life through his own voice. In this sense, it seems to me that Lyapunov doesn’t depart from the ideal of transcendence as conceived by Liszt in his études: a sort of transmutation of the most inaccessible difficulty into the rarest poetry, which can only be gathered at the very frontiers of piano technique. But the resemblance between the two cycles is also deceptive. Just as two brothers share common features, that very similarity reveals the differences between them. While one man borrows from the other in many ways – especially in the piano writing – the actual music and the personality it reveals are quite different, and this is true from the very first piece: what do Liszt’s dazzling Preludio and Lyapunov’s fragile Berceuse have in common? Neither of these two pieces, moreover, has any true equivalent anywhere in the respective collections. Perhaps because Lyapunov may have been a more introverted personality, there is no real counterpart to the Presto furioso of Wilde Jagd or the overwhelming stampede of Mazeppa . On the other hand, folklore, absent from Liszt’s cycle, is constantly evoked in Lyapunov’s set: the Caucasus in Térek and Lesghinka , Orthodox Russia in Carillon and Chant épique , and, as you mentioned, the Élégie , which seizes the pretext of the dedication to Liszt to evoke the gypsy style.