Franz Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 1 | Khatia Buniatishvili (Verbier 2011)

Pure piano virtuosity: Khatia Buniatishvili plays Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (S. 514) by Franz Liszt. The concert took place at the Verbier Festival on July 26. 2011. Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886), who was himself a great piano virtuoso, composed several top-class bravura pieces for piano, including the four Mephisto Waltzes. The Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (1856 - 61) is the most famous of the four piano waltzes and remains one of the most frequently performed virtuoso pieces by the Austro-Hungarian composer. The first Mephisto waltz is subtitled ‚Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke‘ (The Dance in the Village Inn) and is a typical example of program music. However, the literary template for the program around the Mephisto figure does not come from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous Faust tragedy but from the verse epic “Faust. Ein Gedicht“ by the Austrian writer Nikolaus Lenau (1802 - 1850). In the episode The Dance, Faust and Mephisto enter a village tavern. There Mephisto grabs a musician’s violin,