Liszt's Liebesträume No. 3, S. 541. This piano piece began as a song, setting a poem by the German writer Ferdinand Freiligrath whose last line runs "love as long as you are able to love." Liszt moved the vocal line onto the piano and did not put it on top: it is sung from the middle, between the two hands. Four minutes eighteen, with two runs that leave the beat entirely. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
The words came first; the piano piece came second
In the 1840s Liszt wrote three art songs, each setting a German poem. He then arranged all three for solo piano and published them in 1850 under the title Liebesträume — Three Nocturnes. So this piece has words; nobody sings them when it is played.
No. 3 sets Freiligrath's poem "O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst." It says something very plain: love while you still can, because one day you will stand at a grave and weep, and by then the person cannot hear you.
Knowing that, you start to hear the melody as speech: the phrases are of unequal length, they fall at the ends, and there are places to breathe. That is not a line designed for a keyboard. It was written for a voice.
In the piano version Liszt did something counter-intuitive: he did not put the melody on top. It sits in the middle register while both hands move above and below, wrapping around it. It sounds like three hands and it is two, interlocking to leave the middle free. This is one of Liszt's most famous devices, and this is its best-sounding use.
The same sentence three times, each one pushed harder
It opens low and warm. The melody emerges from the middle of the keyboard with movement above and below it; you can hear the line but you cannot say which hand has it. Almost nothing rises or falls — someone speaking quietly.
The second time round, the whole thing moves up, the sound brightens, and the tempo starts to press forward. This time it breaks off halfway: the score gives a long run with no beat at all, spilling down from the top of the keyboard. For those seconds, time stops.
The third time is the peak. The sound is pushed up, faster and fuller, until it cannot go higher, and then comes another run — longer this time, and the highest note in the piece is inside it.
Then everything falls back. The opening returns, lighter than before, as though the talking is over and things are being put away. In the last bars there is less and less, and it settles very low.
The shape is extremely simple: the same sentence three times — first to yourself, then to someone, then until you cannot go on.
Eighty-nine bars, and twice the beat is let go entirely
Eighty-nine bars, 6/4, A-flat major, one thousand nine hundred and forty-two sounding notes.
The first section begins in A-flat with the melody in the middle register and both hands running sextuplets above and below it. Almost nothing changes dynamically here.
Then it moves to a completely different key — four flats become five sharps — and the tone turns urgent, marked "more animated, with passion." The key changes again and the direction reads "pressing on throughout" as the sound stacks upward.
The two cadenzas are the landmarks of this piece. Those bars have no beat: each is one long free run — eighty-four notes in the first, ninety-six in the second, each crammed into a single bar — and the highest note in the piece, G7, is inside the second.
The third section returns to A-flat with the opening melody as it was, but much thinner. Over the last ten bars the notes drop away and it settles at the bottom.
The range here runs from G♯1 to G7, nearly six octaves. There are ten octave-transposition marks, mostly across those two runs.
The difficulty is leaving the middle line free
This is not the hardest Liszt, but its difficulties are unusual.
First, dividing the hands. The melody is in the middle, carried mostly by the right thumb early on and handed to the left later — the joins must be inaudible, and that is the central technical problem. The sextuplets above and below have to sit a whole level below the tune.
Second, the two cadenzas. The score does not say how long they take; the time is entirely the player's. Learn the notes at a fixed speed first and decide afterwards where to hurry and where to wait — freedom from the start becomes mess.
Third, the pedal. The melody must join up, but the runs above and below turn to mud quickly, so keep it shallow and change more often than it looks.
Fourth, do not get loud early. The three statements grow; spend it all on the first and there is nothing left to push.
The tempo is 120 to the quarter — the heading is Poco Allegro, and this takes the low edge of that term's usual band. The finished video runs four minutes eighteen.
We rate this 5 out of 5.
The other two of the set, and the very different man he became
Liebesträume is a set of three; Nos. 1 and 2 also set German poems, are shorter, and are much quieter — neither is anywhere near as well known as the third.
For the same period and the same trick of hiding the tune in the middle: Chopin's nocturnes, one of which (in E-flat) is already on this channel.
For the other Liszt entirely: his late works have very few notes and harmonies that never resolve, and could be by a different man.
