Mazeppa

[Scion]

I'm sure there are many pieces that sound better than Liszt's Mazeppa, although the 15-year old Liszt is a genius :S

Does anyone have any comments?

[Nightklavier]

Yeah, there are pieces that sound better, but this is just opinion. And "sound better" is too broad. I'm not sure if you meant to make a reply and posted a topic instead, since your sentence seems like it was replying to something, but I'll go ahead and give comments.

Liszt's "Mazeppa" is a piano tour de force. Played by the right pianist, it sounds incredibly dramatic, powerful, and often times like the piano is producing wonderful thunder storms. Despite critics, I think it also has a great and original melody.

A lot of people think Liszt just "banged" at the piano without passion or thought, but I think they're all wrong. I've heard many "bangers", mostly russian guys like Prokofiev, Shostakovich, etc, and there doesn't seem to be strong melody behind the banging... unlike Liszt. His Sonata in B minor is amazing to me. It's one of my all-time favorite colossal piano works. It bangs, it roars, it sings; it does so much. And it "sounds better" than "Mazeppa", in my opinion.

Have you heard the other Transcendental Etudes, though? They're all good, but "Mazeppa" seems to be a real gem, followed by "Vision" and "Evening Harmony". I really think, though, that Liszt is underrated. His transcriptions alone make him a genius. Anyone who can transcribe Beethoven's symphonies had extraordinary talent. And it must be hard, because I have yet to see transcriptions for Mozart's Symphonies or Bach's Brandenburg Concerto's.

But I'm getting off topic I think. There is... *one* piece of many that sounds better than "Mazeppa" to me, and that's Busoni's arrangement of Bach's 'Chaconne from Partita No. 2' I know in a Beethoven forum I could be blasted for this, but I think that's one of the best sounding piano works I've *ever* heard. Sorry "Hammerklavier" or "Appassionata" =(