Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major

Quick Facts

• A piece in a single, uninterrupted movement with several distinctive sections (anywhere from 4-8, depending on how to qualify each “section”)
• Composed between 1839-61
  • Liszt first drafted the piece in 1839, then put it away for several years and revised it multiple times before producing the final version in 1861
• Dedicated to Hans Bronsart von Schellendorff, Liszt’s pupil and friend
• Premiered in 1857 in Weimar, with Schellendorff as the soloist and Liszt conducting

About the Piece

• Liszt initially characterized the work as a Concerto symphonique, a genre midway between a concerto and a symphony.
• Despite being known as a dazzling virtuoso on the stage, Liszt’s writing for the piano is unexpectedly subdued (while still technically challenging).
  • “One senses the composer’s deep-seated desire to integrate the solo instrument into the symphonic texture rather than highlight it as a vessel of independent display.”¹
• Liszt would never perform the work himself. He often agonized over larger-scale pieces, such as this piano concerto, and spent years working through revisions.²
• Listen for – the opening theme (first heard in the winds), which then spends the remainder of the piece going through various transformations to produce many musical characterizations. At its premiere, one critic called the work “The life and adventures of a single melody.”³  

1. James M. Keller, “Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2,” San Francisco Symphony (2018), accessed July 21, 2023, https://www.sfsymphony.org/Data/Event-Data/Program-Notes/L/Liszt-Piano-Concerto-No-2.
2. Hugh Macdonald, “Piano Concerto No. 2,” Boston Symphony Orchestra, accessed July 21, 2023, https://www.bso.org/works/piano-concerto-no-2-4.
3. Georg Predota, “Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 Premiered Today in 1857,” Interlude (2019), accessed July 21, 2023, https://interlude.hk/liszt-piano-concerto-2-premiered-today-1857/.