Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

The most bombastic and beloved of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies sprawls across its ten-plus minutes with the episodic logic of a folk gathering rather than a formal composition. It opens with a slow, brooding lassan section — improvisatory, almost speechlike in its freedom, the pianist ranging across the full keyboard in rhetorical gestures. Then comes the friska: a furious accelerating dance in minor key that builds to a conclusion of almost comic exuberance. Liszt draws on the verbunkos tradition of Hungarian instrumental folk music, using characteristic scales, rhythmic dotted patterns, and ornamental flourishes that give the piece its ethnic flavor (itself a somewhat romanticized construction). The emotional arc moves from mournful grandeur to reckless celebration. It has been used in cartoons, film scores, and advertisements so often that the music now carries layers of borrowed cultural memory, but played well it still generates the particular excitement of folk music pushed to its absolute technical limit.