Description

he renowned pianist Franz Liszt created numerous piano transcriptions of works by other composers, including Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, a seminal 19th-century opera. Liszt's sensitive piano rendition of the opera's famous closing scene, "Mild und leise, wie er lächelt" ("Softly and gently, as he smiles"), is the source of the title "Isoldens Liebestod" (Isolde's Love-Death) - a title more familiar to us today than Wagner's own description of the music as Isolde's "transfiguration."