Overview
Introduction
The three works comprising the 1859 version of Venezia e Napoli (Venice and Naples) are taken from the four piano pieces that Liszt composed around 1840, making up the first version of the collection. Of these, only the last two, the Andante placido and the Tarantelles napolitaines, were used in the second version. The three works here were published as a supplement to the Années de Pèlerinage, Second Year: Italie, in 1861. While these three are not a part of that set, their inspiration came from Liszt's Italian travels of the late 1830s, a period during which he was accompanied by his lover and the mother of his three children, Marie d'Agoult (a famous writer who used the pseudonym Daniel Stern). He therefore decided to supplement the Second Year of the Années with this trio of works, which are also stylistically similar.
The first piece, Gondoliera, is a reworking of the Andante placido of the first version, which was in turn based on a popular Venetian song. Liszt fashioned an attractive barcarole that begins with warm harmony in the bass; the songful main theme comes in the upper register with a decidedly Italianate air. The piece is calm and has an almost swaying lilt that might well suggest a picturesque ride on a gondola through Venice. There is also something sentimental about the mood, although the piece never becomes saccharine.
Canzone is based on the gondola song Nessun maggior dolore, from Rossini's Otello (1816). It begins darkly, with a descending figure accompanied by ominous trills. Out of the deep bass emerges the theme, which would not be out of place in any Italian operatic tragedy. Overall, this piece is suffused with the gloom Liszt imparted to much of his late music, particularly as heard in the Lugubrious gondolas I and II and the Marche Funebre from the Années de Pèlerinage, Third Year.
The final of the three pieces, the Tarantella, is based on the fourth piece in the 1840 version of Tarantelles napolitaines, in which Liszt made use of a theme by Guillaume Louis Cottrau (1797 - 1847). The Tarantella begins without pause after the Canzone, and the contrast that this presto opening provides following the slow tempos of the previous pieces could hardly be greater: like a thoroughbred dashing from the starting gate, the music takes off in urgent flight. With the introduction of a colorful, jaunty theme, the mood changes to one of lively fantasy. In fact the fantasy style dominates here; the piece ranges widely in mood and color, with Neapolitan images and the feeling of merriment pervading. Liszt's writing is also brilliant, much of it delicate and dazzling and reminiscent of the bright colors and virtuosic fireworks heard in his Rhapsodie Espagnole.
