Progress Video 1: Liszt Ballade 1 (S. 170)

Liszt's 1st Ballade (S. 170, composed in 1849) is the fourth substantive Liszt piece that I'm working on this year. (I haven't publicly posted Harmonies du Soir / the 11th Transcendental etude yet, which was the third piece I've been working on... Unlisted progress video:    • Progress Video 1: Liszt Transcendental Etu...  ) I originally planned to work on Liszt's 2nd Ballade, finding the opening of his 1st Ballade a bit too derivative (a la Chopin's First Ballade or Schumann's Papillons). But the more I listened to it, the more charming I found it. Plus it has a performance time of ~1/2 that of the 2nd Ballade so I thought it'd be easier to learn first. Of course, I'm now finding that it's more difficult than I expected 😅 I worked on this ballade for a couple of weeks and started memorizing a few sections before going on a no-piano vacation, and pleasantly surprised at how much I've retained sans practice. I listened to several recordings before starting this piece - mostly by lesser known or perhaps amateur pianists, since it's much less recorded/performed than Liszt's 2nd Ballade. Then I worked on it. Then I listened to the same recordings while on vacation sans piano. And there are so many more things I can hear and appreciate now that I've worked on it myself. There's still a lot more work to be done, and I don't know when the next progress video will be. For now, it's shakily memorized (with too many stumbles to publicly post, even by my very loose standards), since like all the Liszt I've been working on, it will ultimately be easier to perform from memory. I'm still parallel-processing Liszt's Un Sospiro, Hungarian Rhapsody 11, and Transcendental Etude 11. I'd really like to learn Liszt's Second Ballade next...we'll see!