The Concerto pathétique (S.258/2), completed in 1866, is Franz Liszt's most substantial and ambitious two-piano work. At least three piano concerto arrangements of the work have been made by other composers, based on Liszt's suggestions. History and significance In 1851 Breitkopf & Härtel published the solo piano work Grosses Concert-Solo (in modern editions as Grosses Konzertsolo) (S.176) by Franz Liszt. Though not as popular as the later Piano Sonata in B minor by the same composer, the work achieves significance by the fact that it anticipates the Sonata as a large-scale nonprogrammatic work. It shows structural similarities to the Sonata and obvious thematic relationship to both the Sonata and the Faust Symphony. One unpublished earlier version of the work exists, titled in French in the manuscript Grand Solo de concert (S.175a). This version differs structurally from the published Grosses Concert-Solo, thus revealing the existence of interesting material for a study on the genesis of Liszt’s gradual innovations in constructing a large-scale musical organism, which were to come to full fruition in the Sonata. In 1866 a two-piano version was published under the title Concerto pathétique (S.258/2) which, though not differing structurally from the Grosses Concert-Solo, introduces a more effective layout of the musical thoughts, mainly due to an innovative concerto-like treatment of the two-piano ensemble. The initial conception of a projected piano concerto can further be proved by a number of extant piano concerto arrangements by various composers, including orchestra sketches by Liszt himself (the unpublished manuscript containing the piece's original (French) title Grand solo de concert) (S.365). While the solo piano version is rarely performed today, the Concerto pathétique has become a repertoire piece of the two-piano genre. Genesis of the "four-movements-in-one" form The experimental nature of the Concerto pathétique gives it an outstanding presence in the Liszt oeuvre. The composer made many attempts to find an appropriate title — Grand solo de concert, Grand Concert, Morceau de Concert, etc. — indicating that this work was an experiment with new forms. Even the Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major which Liszt begun work on in the same year (1849) as the Grand Solo de concert/Grosses Concert-Solo had its genesis ten years earlier in a seemingly self-contradictorally entitled work Concerto sans orchestre (S.524a). The fact that the solo Grosses Concert-Solo has been overshadowed by the later two-piano version has obscured the importance of the former as one of Liszt’s