Essential Liszt
Franz Liszt – a towering figure in 19th century music whose lasting influence continues to be felt today, most significantly in the formal piano recital and the concept of the conductor as a performer.
Read more…There are many misconceptions surrounding Liszt, which have coloured views of the man and his music. Until fairly recently, Liszt has been little appreciated, regarded by many as a "showman" whose virtuosity was a negative attribute. A poseur and a charlatan, superficial and bombastic whose music contains unstable melodic invention, with a tendency to "say things too often", and which is grandiose, grandiloquent, vulgar and over-abundant.
Liszt was a great champion of other musicians and regularly programmed their music in his concerts, including Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, and Berlioz, in addition to his own piano transcriptions of their orchestral and operatic repertoire, something which was previously almost unheard of and which brought this music to a wider audience.
Wagner called him "the most musical of all musicians" (Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, became Wagner's second wife), and for the pianist Liszt mobilizes all facets of the instrument, rendering it a tool subordinate to the music. His Transcendental Etudes, for example, represent the height of musical sophistication and technical expertise, and his musical outlook in general was noble, sacred, orchestral and metaphysical. His late music in particular displays extreme contrasts, is arbitrary and fragmentary, and atonal. It anticipates the French impressionists, Schoenberg, Messiaen and beyond, effectively ushering in the 20th century.