Lang Lang started learning the piano at age 2 after hearing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in a Tom and Jerry episode, spurring a lifelong devotion to the Hungarian virtuoso. The pieces presented here reveal two sides to the composer: the older, introspective man, followed by a fiendishly difficult work from his youth.

Liszt met his great love, Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, in 1847 while on tour in Kiev. She helped convince him to abandon his grueling performance schedule to focus on composition. After Liszt’s retirement from concertizing, he initially turned away from the bravura showpieces, which had fueled “Lisztomania” across Europe, toward a more introspective style.

The Consolations are in the style of nocturnes, with long, arcing melodies over rustling arpeggiated accompaniment. No. 2 is written in the key of E major. Liszt, a deeply pious man who later became a lay member of the Third Order of Saint Francis, often used this key for religious themes; indeed, Lang Lang describes this piece as “a whispered prayer that suddenly opens up into something universal.”

Decades earlier, the 23-year-old Liszt became embroiled in a high-society scandal. The author and countess Marie d’Agoult, pregnant with Liszt’s child, left her husband in Paris to join Liszt in Switzerland. From Switzerland they journeyed south, spending years in Italy. These travels inspired the suites Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage); Liszt later added Venezia e Napoli to this larger set.

Venezia e Napoli concludes with a showstopping tarantella, Liszt’s interpretation of the traditional southern Italian folk dance. It opens with an ominous rumbling in the piano’s lowest range before launching into a ferocious dance. The score includes the instruction “martellato,” evoking the tambourines of a traditional tarantella. Liszt contrasts propulsive dance rhythms with sparkling cascades of 16th notes. The middle section is a rhapsodic interpolation of “Fenesta vascia,” a popular Neapolitan song. The piece concludes with a return of the dance, closing with a blistering climax.

—Andrew McIntyre © 2026