Somehow I never knew that Franz Liszt wrote a suite of piano pieces called Weihnachtsbaum, which translates to “Christmas Tree”. It’s definitely not one of Liszt’s famous pieces; apparently its partially-seasonal nature combined with its general lack of virtuosic fireworks (well, comparatively so, for a piece by Liszt) have led to its obscurity in Liszt’s output. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating and lovely listen. Liszt wrote the work for his granddaughter Daniela, who apparently gave the first performance; as she was a quite young pianist at the time, this may explain why Liszt didn’t write the piece to be as demanding for the soloist as his general work would have seemed to prompt. (Liszt, if you are unfamiliar, was one of the greatest pianists of all time, and he wrote music that is fiendishly demanding of the soloist, which in his time was usually himself.)
The suite is not entirely Christmas-based, with several of the pieces apparently being autobiographical in nature, but that’s fine, because after all, a big part of Christmas is remembering, isn’t it?
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