Freie Bearbeitungen XIV (II/14)

Series II of the New Liszt Edition contains Liszt's free arrangements and transcriptions for the piano. Volume 14 includes pieces based on works by Händel, Ferdinand Huber, Verdi, Dargomyzhsky, Eduard Lassen, Saint-Saens, Massenet, and Géza Zichy. After losing his right arm in an accident, with his friend Liszt's encouragement Count Géza Zichy published his studies for the left hand, and he dedicated them to the great composer.

In a letter of thanks Liszt expressed his gratitude, and attached his version of the studies, arranged for two hands. Another piece with a Hungarian connection is the work Revive Szegedin!. The basis for this was a piece by Massenet that was itself an arrangement: Massenet orchestrated a march by the amateur composer Ignác Frank Szabadi for a concert in Paris in aid of the victims of the flood in the town of Szeged in 1879. Liszt was one of the people invited to the concert, and he responded with the manuscript of Revive Szegedin!.

The extent to which Liszt followed the structure of the original works and how much of his own material he added varies from piece to piece. Details of this are given in the preface.

As customary, there are two versions of the publication: a blue clothbound edition and a grey softcover edition. The informative preface giving the most important information on the contents and technical details is identical in both versions, but only the former version includes an English description of the sources and a critical commentary. Both versions include facsimiles of pages of Liszt's original autograph manuscript.