Schumann was full of praise for Schubert’s sonorous piano style which seems to come
from the depths of the pianoforte.
Schubert himself was not a brilliant player. He does not seem to have owned a piano.
Schubert’s piano style is no less orchestral than it is vocal. In the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy the
piano is turned into an orchestra much more radically than had ever been done before.
In Schubert’s music the pedal is the soul of the piano.
There are two possible methods of notation. The composer writes down how long the
note should sound, or he indicates how long the finger should or can be kept on the key.
We could call these the musical notation, and the technical notation, respectively.
Schubert’s notation is technical.
Schubert was an accent maniac but there is hardly a composer after the baroque age
whose rhythm is so frequently ‘mis-spelt’.
Schubert’s piano works often surpassed the possibilities of his instruments, as the Great C
major Symphony surpassed the size and performing habits of contemporary orchestras.
Franz Liszt was, first and foremost, a phenomenon of expressivenss. Schumann called
him a “genius of interpretation”. Liszt is said to have infused even Czerny and Cramer
studies with radiant life.
Technique served Liszt as a means of opening up new realms of expression.
The pianist should give simplicity to his passages of religious meditation, bring out the
devilry behind the capriciousness, and convey the profound resignation behind the
strangely bleak experiments of his late works.
Another danger to be avoided is excessive rubato.
Liszt’s teaching concentrated on interpretation. What he demanded was a “technique
created by the spirit, not derived from the mechanism of the piano.” Liszt did not
consider himself a piano teacher.
August Stradal, who studied with Liszt after 1880, made the curious remark that Liszt’s
entire technique, besides his finger technique, was a wrist technique.
Producing orchestral colours on the piano, in timbre and in manner, is required for the
playing of transcriptions and paraphrases.