Ungarische Zigeunerweisen - Unlikely Theory

Unlikely Theory

One theory that has been advanced is that Liszt instructed Menter to take the piece to her friend Tchaikovsky for orchestration, but not to mention his (Liszt's) name so that Liszt's composership of the work could be hidden from Tchaikovsky (who did not especially admire Liszt). Tchaikovsky once wrote " music leaves me completely cold", and he was not pleased with Liszt's piano transcription of his Polonaise from the opera Eugene Onegin. But when one considers that Tchaikovsky had orchestrated Liszt's song Der König in Thule in 1874; and the year after Liszt's death he chose to orchestrate Liszt's version of Mozart's Ave verum corpus (as part of his Orchestral Suite No. 4, "Mozartiana", 1887), although he could just as easily have used Mozart's original, it is clear that his dislike of Liszt was not all-encompassing. His reference to Liszt in his diary as "the old Jesuit" is positively friendly compared to the vituperation he reserved for many of his other contemporaries. (For example, he referred to Brahms as "a giftless bastard" ... "full of pretensions but without any real depths", ... "detestable... so pitiful and insignificant." And of Wagner, he wrote: "Before, music strove to delight people; now they are tormented and exhausted.")

While this theory is considered exceedingly unlikely by some, it is not so considered by Janina Fialkowska, the pianist who premiered Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 3 in 1990. She says she was told by Roch Serra (who was told by the Liszt scholar Professor Milstein, who was told by Vera Timanova, who was told by Sophie Menter herself), that Liszt was indeed the composer of the piece, but he did not want Tchaikovsky to be aware of this.