Liszt: Impromptu brillant sur des thèmes de Rossini et Spontini, S.150

Introduction

The Opus 3 Impromptu brillant is intended for light entertainment, and the formal structure is perforce rather haphazard since so much external material is employed. La donna del lago and Armida by Rossini provide the themes for the first part of the work, the middle section utilises Spontini’s Olympie and Fernand Cortez, and the Rossini themes return in a sort of recapitulation. However, to Lisztians, the most striking thing about the piece is Liszt’s original introduction, which he salvaged to introduce the E flat major study of the 1838 set, and then eventually transformed that into Eroica in the Transcendental Etudes.