With the exception of a handful of pieces, including, of course, his two piano concertos, most of Franz Liszt’s works have become the province of the archivist rather than the listener. The intimate details of his affairs with the Countess d’Agoult (the mother of his children, including Cosima, who would marry Richard Wagner) and Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, among others, and his allure as the paragon of the Romantic artist had infinite appeal for biographers. Aside from his power as a pianist and his prowess as a conductor, his enormous influence as a composer is incalculable.

During the late 1830s, while Liszt was at work on his first draft of the present concerto, pianist-conductor Sir Charles Hallé compared Liszt’s playing to that of Chopin, with which he was also well acquainted: “Such marvels of executive skill and power [as Liszt’s] I could never have imagined…. Chopin carried you with him into a dreamland, in which you would have liked to have dwelled forever. Liszt was all sunshine and dazzling splendor, subjugating his hearers with a power that none could withstand.”

And Robert Schumann (similarly acquainted with the playing of Chopin) said: “And now the demon began to stir in [Liszt]. First he played with the public as if to test it, then gave it something more profound, until he had enmeshed every member of the audience with his art and did with them as he willed. Within a few seconds, tenderness, boldness, exquisiteness, wildness succeeded one another….”

Schumann might have been describing not only the performer but the actual notes of the A-major Piano Concerto, which Liszt began sketching in 1839 but revised several times. It did not reach its present, final state until 1861. The first performance of record—of any version—took place in Weimar in 1857, with Liszt’s pupil Hans Bronsart von Schellendorff as soloist and the composer as conductor.

The final version of the concerto is in one continuous movement, with many fluctuations of tempo. Continuity and unity are cannily maintained by the seven-note recurring, swooning theme announced at the outset by the clarinets. Liszt takes his sweet time developing this exquisitely romantic theme, which gains in intensity as the piano assumes dominance, ending what might be called the first development with a fiery cadenza. The more animated contrasting theme is replaced by yet another, wholly new melodic notion. Eventually the “unifying” theme is resumed in a gorgeous cello solo, followed by another thunderous piano cadenza and the martial Allegro deciso rendering of the theme, which is then subjected to a further series of transformations before the slam-bang conclusion.

—Herbert Glass