Franz Liszt completed his Piano Sonata in B Minor at Weimar in 1853. It met with a mixed reception from the musical establishment of the day but is now a part of the repertoire of every leading pianist and may even be the most frequently recorded and performed piano work ever written. It is the outstanding example of the compositional process of thematic transformation. The grandeur and lyrical power of its themes, based on three motifs so clearly stated at the outset, place it at the pinnacle of the piano literature.
Arthur Friedheim (1859–1932) was Liszt’s pupil, secretary and assistant during the last years of Liszt’s life. He took up the Sonata in the 1880s, studied it with Liszt and performed it many times in public, introducing it to Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Moscow and New York in the 1880s and 1890s. His performance at the Weimar Musikfest in 1884, in Liszt’s presence, prompted Liszt’s comment: „That is the way I thought the composition when I wrote it.“ Between 1905 and 1907 Friedheim issued a Hupfeld Phonola roll recording of the Sonata which is the subject of a comprehensive discussion and analysis in the 2011 monograph: „Arthur Friedheim’s Recently Discovered Roll Recording“ also published by Wensleydale Press in the series „Liszt Piano Sonata Monographs“. Towards the end of his life, Friedheim prepared this painstakingly exact and heartfelt edition of the Sonata obviously with the intention of having it published. The present long overdue publication gives students and scholars a fascinating, unique and invaluable source of the authentic performing tradition for Franz Liszt’s Sonata as entrusted to Arthur Friedheim by the Master himself.
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