Franz Liszt loved crafting solo piano transcriptions of lieder and other kinds of voice/piano songs (but, then again, he loved making solo piano transcriptions of just about anything), and he didn't limit himself to just the standard catalog of Schubert favorites; often he took his own songs to the re-arranging room. The three Liebesträume for piano, S. 541, the third of which is the famous Liebesträum that seems to be on every pianist's encore list and every romantic piano music CD sampler, are such items—they and their song equivalents were in fact published simultaneously in 1850. Liszt's songs, including these, are unjustly neglected, but the Liebesträume—or one of them, anyway—never have been.

The three Liebesträume, which Liszt also called notturnos (nocturnes, in English), are based on the following three songs: 1. "Hohe Liebe," S. 307, to a text by Johann Ludwig Uhland and probably composed in 1849, 2. "Gestorben war ich," S. 308, likewise Uhland and 1849, 3. "O Lieb, so lang du lieben kannst," S. 298, with a text by Ferdinand Freiligrath and first sketched by Liszt nearly six years before the other two.

In the piano versions, as in his other piano transcriptions, Liszt moves in and out of the original musical text as he feels need to—here is a passage virtually identical to the parallel one in the lied, but over there is a far more soloistic episode that would seem altogether out of place in a song. A handful of mini-cadenzas (of the type, not coincidentally, found in Chopin's nocturnes) pop up in each Liebestraum, usually to bridge one section of music to another.

Two of the S. 541 pieces, No. 1 and No. 3, are in the warm, ingratiating key of A flat major, a favorite tonal location of nocturne composers. No. 2 is set in E major. All are sewn from the smoothest melodic silk and the kind of rich, semi-chromatic harmonies so beloved of middle-Romantic composers. But it isn't hard to see, or rather hear, why No. 3 is universally known and the other two are only infrequently heard. Its gently arcing six-bar phrases and throbbing repeated notes, and that glowing, completely unexpected modulation to B major after the opening paragraph of music, make it a miniature masterpiece.

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3.O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst

There are three Liebesträume (Dreams of Love), and the third is by far the most popular. Each is a transcription of a song Liszt had written about three years before. The song upon which the third of the Liebesträume is based is O Lieb, so lang du lieben kannst, a setting of the poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath. The piece was originally published as Notturno No. 3 and carried the song's title as a subtitle.

A more purely Lisztian creation would be hard to imagine than the passionate, sentimental melody that is clearly behind the work's popularity. It has a sweetness and directness at the outset, then grows impassioned in the middle section. After a climax that features some bravura writing, the melody returns to its more tranquil opening mood, though now more reflective and sadder. While this is undeniably a simple formula, it is nonetheless an effective one that Liszt makes the most of in the five minutes or so of music.

Liszt's third Liebesträume eventually became so popular and overplayed that by the mid-20th century pianists began dropping it from their repertory. Though that trend eventually reversed, the piece is still not as often performed as it once was.



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