Ballades Piano Solo

Liszt wrote his two Ballades in 1845Œ_49 and 1853 during a time of personal turmoil. The successful virtuoso increasingly saw himself as a composer who strove after formal clarity, as shown by the B minor sonata that was also composed in 1853. When Liszt began work on the first Ballade, he had just separated from his mistress of many years, Marie Comtesse dŒÍAgoult. He called the first sketches for the work DerniíÂres Illusions. A better-known work is the second Ballade in B minor, with whose ending hestruggled (the two fortissimo endings in LisztŒÍs autograph have been pu blished for the first time in the appendix to this edition). Edited by Ernst-Gí_nter Heinemann and Rena Charnin Mueller with fingerings by Andreas Groethuysen.