Franz Liszt, the greatest virtuoso pianist of his generation, retired from the concert stage at the age of 35 to focus on conducting, teaching and, above all, composing. He developed an adventurous and groundbreaking approach to harmony, and he left an indelible mark on the art of program music—instrumental works with references to specific stories or images—in formats ranging from intimate piano albums to grand symphonic poems.

The idea of the symphonic poem—a single-movement composition expressing a story or concept in purely orchestral terms—proved to be one of Liszt’s most enduring legacies. Previous orchestral composers had incorporated elements of scene painting or storytelling, like Beethoven in his “Pastoral” Sixth Symphony or Berlioz in Symphonie fantastique, but they also maintained the abstract logic of the symphony to guide their overall structure. Liszt’s innovation was to relax the rules of form and harmony and trust that the storytelling would supply its own guiding logic for the listener.

The story behind the symphonic poem Prometheus comes from Ancient Greek mythology: The titan Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and uses it to bestow life on humanity, earning him the eternal punishment of being chained to a rock while an eagle pecks away at his liver. Liszt wrote the first version of this music in 1850 as an overture and series of choruses based on Prometheus Unbound by Johann Gottfried Herder, one of the founding fathers of German literature. Five years later, Liszt compressed the ideas into this symphonic poem full of explosive themes, wild dissonances and an idiosyncratic structure that detours to an unexpected fugue in the middle, serving up music as fiery and anguished as its mythical inspiration.

-- © 2020 Aaron Grad

Originally performed February 15, 2020.