Ex. 8-12: Не брани меня, мой друг

Liszt composed this song in 1866, when he was 54. It is his only song in Russian. He wrote more than eighty songs in six languages: German, French, Italian, Hungarian, English, and Russian.

The poem is by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817–1875), a Russian poet and playwright. He was a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy, the novelist. He wrote the poem in 1858, and it is only eight lines long. The poem says: “Do not scold me, my friend. Your anger will not come out well. It only sounds sweet in my ear. I will just listen for the words. When they pour out all at once, it is a wonder — like pearls falling on a silver dish.” Liszt dedicated the song to Countess Sofia Tolstaya, the poet’s wife.

There is no record that Liszt could read Russian. He grew up speaking German, and French became his main language. Liszt was born in Hungary, but he could not speak Hungarian, and he began to study it seriously only in his sixties. He had set a Hungarian poem to music as early as 1847, more than twenty years before he began to study the language.

Liszt never married. Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was his companion from 1847, when he was 35, until his death at 74. She was born in what is now Ukraine, and Liszt stayed at her estate there from the autumn of 1847 into 1848. He may have learned a little Russian from her.

They planned to marry in Rome on 22 October 1861, his 50th birthday. Carolyne had been married before, and the Catholic Church had to annul that first marriage. On the evening before the wedding, they learned that the church had reopened the question. The wedding never took place.

The song was not published in Liszt’s lifetime. It first appeared in Moscow in 1958, ninety-two years after he wrote it.

From the album Liszt - Roots & Routes by Elisabeth Kulman and Eduard Kutrowatz (2011). Both musicians grew up near Raiding, and the album was recorded there, next to the house where Liszt was born.
Spotify