LISZT'S HUNGARIAN RHAPSODIES
Played by LESLIE ENGLAND
Rhapsody No. 8 Rhapsody No. II
IN THE SENSE of ' Foundations ', Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies are the models upon which all later composers have based their fantasies, rhapsodies, and other pieces built up from folk melodies. Liszt had a scholar's knowledge and a patriot's love of his native Magyar folk music, and with the idea of preserving as much of it as he could in the most acceptable form he could think of, he selected certain characteristic Magyar melodies and weaved them into a series of brilliant pianoforte works, twenty in all, which he called Hungarian Rhapsodies. Pianistically, the Rhapsodies are difficult and of a very high virtuoso standard, but, musically, they are more than that. Many of them have been scored for orchestra, and these have always been as popular as anything in the orchestral repertory. It is undoubtedly due to Liszt and his Rhapsodies in the first place that we owe our never-fading delight in the rhythmic and fascinating Hungarian folk melodies now so familiar to us.