Via Crucis
I remember standing in the much-regretted Cambridge Music Shop in All Saints Passage well over thirty years ago listening to a magnificent recording of Stephen Hough playing Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude. Transported, I bought the disc. Liszt’s sacred, contemplative piano works have accompanied me for decades, then; but I’d never heard his Via Crucis until I came across Leif Ove Andsnes’s newly released album. The pared-down, serene essentiality of this music is astounding. Often enough it does not sound like Liszt at all – yet it is, an expression of the later stage of the composer’s life: he was 68, and a cleric in minor orders, when the work was completed. Liszt’s Via Crucis was first performed in Budapest on Good Friday in 1929. I put it on today after celebrating the solemn Commemoration of the Passion. I listened with reverence, consoled.
