Three Funeral Odes / from the Cradle to the Grave / etc

As part of Liszt's anniversary year Hyperion turns to some of the composer's most underrecorded and underperformed works. Liszt's piano music is so much in the foreground that his works for orchestra have been almost forgotten. Here we present a fascinating selection.

Liszt's Trois Odes funèbres were composed between 1860 and 1866, and exist in a variety of versions: for orchestra, for piano solo and for piano duet. There is also a chorus in the first Ode and the possibility of a narrator in the first and second. The first is also an organ piece, with the title Trauerode, and La notte also exists for violin and piano. The third of the Odes is also entitled 'Epilogue to the Symphonic Poem: Tasso, Lamento e Trionfo', and in its orchestral version it enjoyed a certain vogue towards the end of the nineteenth century. Although it is quite clear from the original manuscripts that Liszt intended these works to be performed as a cycle, they have never been published together and have rarely been performed as he wished.

'From the cradle to the grave' was written after a drawing by the Hungarian artist Mihály Zichy (1827-1906) depicting three stages of existence: birth; the struggle for being; and death, the cradle of the life to come.