Franz Liszt: Funérailles
Two Legends:
1. St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds
2. St Francis of Paola Walking on the Waves

Frédéric Chopin:
Funeral March from Sonata no.2 in Bb Minor
Polonaise in Ab major, op. 53 (arranged by Ferruccio Busoni)

Many issues in piano performance are ethical rather than musical. Far from requiring ever more forensic scrutiny of primary sources for their resolution, they revolve instead around questions of authority and ownership. Do composers have the right posthumously to control the playing style of their works? Should unauthorized performance approaches be allowed to compete with Urtexts? And do editors have the right to suppress performance traditions they regard as unorthodox? This lecture-recital attempts to address these questions through the performance and discussion of some fascinating, but supposedly heretical, variant versions of pieces by Chopin and Liszt.