representation, there is nothing to prevent us from thinking that Liszt showed himself to be, at bottom, more attentive to the main lines of the compositional concept – emphasised, to be sure, by choices of timbre and orchestration, but which also appear abstractly in the mere representation of the notes in the score – than to the materiality of timbre itself. This view is supported by the fact that, in 1841, he had not yet benefited from the conducting experience he was to acquire in his Weimar years. Without wishing to underestimate the sonic revolutions of Beethoven’s orchestration, it is likely that, despite Liszt’s indications of instrumentation, the (probably more abstract than concrete) relationship he had in his studio with Beethoven’s orchestration, coupled with the monochrome character of the piano transcription, should lead us to reassess, in Beethoven’s original work, the relationship between what is strictly timbral and what comes into the category of bringing out, by means of instrumentation, the main lines of the compositional concept. In a sense, Liszt’s work of transcription sets us on a path that can help us unravel Beethoven’s own priorities. The other three movements were transcribed in 1863-65, as was the Eighth Symphony, which completes this recording. Thus more than twenty years elapsed between the transcription of the Marcia funebre of the Third Symphony and the rest of the work. The Eroica (1804) and the Eighth Symphony (1812) are situated at opposite ends of an extremely eventful period in Beethoven’s life, marked off, on one side, by the Heiligenstadt Testament (1802), the creative impulse of the Second Symphony, the Piano Sonatas op.31, the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, the ‘Waldstein’ and ‘Appassionata’ sonatas, and on the other by the letters to the ‘Immortal Beloved’, his illness, and his fairly disastrous meeting with Goethe. After the Eighth, Beethoven entered a relatively long period of sterility that was to last until 1815, the year of the two Cello Sonatas op.102. In a sense, the Liszt of 1863 gives a version of the Eroica that seems almost pacified, as if monumentalised. This is also a Liszt who has under his belt the solid experience of symphonic
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