"Un Cycle imaginaire"

Franz Liszt: Complete French Songs for Soprano, Vol. 3 This volume bears the heading of a "Cyclus imaginaire", based on texts by Victor Hugo, who appears to have been the most important poet for Franz Liszt. All song texts in German/French/English here: https://avi-music.de/html/lyrics/cycle_imaginaire.html "The third volume of our complete recording of Franz Liszt's art songs is devoted exclusively to vocal settings of poems in French. Liszt was one of the few Central European composers of his time who not only mastered the French language, but was also an avid reader of contemporary French poetry. Multilingualism was relatively uncommon in the mid-19th century; Liszt was a fairly exceptional polyglot, as was his student Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), who composed art songs in each of the six languages she spoke fluently. Liszt's songs have come down to us in various variants and versions. Thus, in this third volume, we had to decide again whether to choose one "definitive" version or offer our listeners the enriching opportunity to hear different alternatives. We decided to create an imaginary song cycle with Victor Hugo settings. Admittedly, Liszt never wrote concept-driven song cycles like those of Schubert or Schumann, but we chose to combine all his Hugo settings (except Gastibelza) in a collage-like sequence...... In most cases, we selected the final versions of the songs." .....read more (Excerpt from the liner notes by Daniel Heide) Volume 1 Liszt, Petrarca Sonnets nos. 47 . 104 . 123 (Andrè Schuen; Daniel Heide) Volume 2 Liszt, Der Du von dem Himmel bist (Konstantin Krimmel; Daniel Heide)