In summer 1881 Franz Liszt composed a work that he called “Valse oubliée” (Forgotten waltz) in a letter to his publisher. The work is reminiscent of the appealing piano waltzes that the composer used to write when he was younger – although there is a certain distance to the usual waltz style. Liszt by no means renounces virtuosity and elegance, but rather infuses these characteristics with nostalgia and irony by embedding typical melodic and rhythmic elements of salon waltzes in innovative, harmonically alienating progressions. In the years that followed he wrote three further “Valses oubliées,” yet number 1, published here in a single edition, has remained the best-loved of these “Forgotten waltzes” by far.
