FRANK MORANA
AmerOrganist 33/9

Helmut Deutsch. Bärenreiter, BA 8248. Liszt originally wrote

this as an instrumental prologue to his Les Quatre Elémens

(The Four Elements), a choral work from which the themes

are taken. In a subsequent, orchestral reworking, he

associated it with a text from Lamartine's Méditations

poètiques: "What is our life but a series of Preludes to

that unknown song, the first solemn note of which is sounded

by Death?" Later, he transcribed it both for two pianos

and for piano four-hands. In the present organ

transcription, Helmut Deutsch brings great practical

performing experience to bear, and the results are

exemplary. The fidelity to the orchestral score is

impressive, although a large instrument of at least three

manuals—with plenty of foundations, and plenty of solo and

reed stops—is presupposed. A few tremolos are dropped, and

in one or two passages, one could wish that the more

dominant musical idea had been assigned to the right-hand,

rather than to the left. One of the main sections calls for

nearly a dozen measures in double-arpeggios in one

right-hand, and this is recapitulated. Throughout the

score, Deutsch is generous in supplying orchestral

instrumental indications as aids to registration,

but there is one important instrumental indication that he

neglects to include—orchestral tuttis. These climactic

passages should have been marked as such at mm. 35, 149,

316, and 378.