Word: lenau
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Liszt: A Faust Symphony; Two Episodes from Lenau's "Faust." (James Conlon conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, with John Aler, tenor, and the men's chorus of the Slovak Philharmonic; Erato.) In the Faust legend, the romantics found all the excesses they craved: sex, violence, power, the diabolical, damnation and salvation. And in Franz Liszt, who had more than a whiff of the necromancer about him, the Faust story found an ideal musical interpreter. In works such as Malediction and Totentanz for piano and orchestra, the four Mephisto Waltzes for solo piano and, most ambitious of all, the Faust Symphony...
Liszt tapped another fervid source of the legend in two episodes of Faust by the mad Hungarian poet Nikolaus Lenau, who wrote his own treatment of the demoniac tale. Nocturnal Procession, a stately, spooky march of Gregorian- chanting penitents, is one of the composer's most original and beautiful creations. The Dance in the Village Inn, better known as the First Mephisto Waltz, sweeps forward with a cloven-hoofed fiddler calling the tune...