For over 25 years, Franz Liszt devoted himself with great devotion to transcribing all of Beethoven's symphonies for piano. With the Ninth Symphony, he initially encountered seemingly insurmountable obstacles and declared: "After numerous attempts in various directions, I had to admit the complete impossibility of even a partially satisfactory arrangement of the fourth movement." He therefore considered his transcriptions complete with the third movement of the Ninth. However, at the urging of the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel, he made another attempt, utilizing the advanced piano technology of his time. Advances in piano construction enabled him to achieve more than ever before. Liszt did not create ordinary piano reductions, but rather recomposed the works as if they had been intended for piano from the outset. His work portrays him as a "conscientious translator" of the composer he revered, whom he regarded as a genius "sacred in art." The complete collection of his transcriptions was finally published in 1865 and dedicated to Hans von Bülow.
