A really interesting character, it's easy to assume the trope of him being a superficial virtuosic performer / rockstar but that is to miss the man who was deeply committed to music.
He would regularly champion Chopin's music and went so far as to write a biography of chopin himself. He was also a huge proponent of Beethoven's works and did a great deal to spread them through Europe.
As stated in the article, he made a departure from his more showy pieces in his later life, and the set which I have always been a fan of for demonstrating this are his "L'années de pèlerinage" - Years of Pilgrimage. The Brendel recordings are a good place to start.
Indeed, superficial musicians don't a) have at least 700 compositions to their credit (according to 1950 Groves encyclopedia) and b) from the age of 36 onwards either perform for free or give the proceeds to charity.
His very late pieces are very interesting. His piece "Nuages Gris" is often cited as being the first impressionistic piece and his piece "Bagatelle sans Tonalité" presaged Schoenberg's move towards atonality a few decades later.
He also received the four minor orders in the Roman Catholic Church (these are porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte, and are one rank below a subdeacon).
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a rockstar, some people enjoy fame, others don't. Chopin and Schubert were comparatively reticent as composers, for example.
The connotation within the space is that the rockstar is not a serious figure. In Liszt's case, was he more about wowing stages with his own technical virtuosity than crafting tasteful music? This is a characterisation attached to him and it implies selfish motivations for his composing (which is fine, regardless, people are free to lead whatever life they choose).
I'm saying that even if Liszt did lead a rockstar life, he should still be taken seriously. Mozart does not get the same degree of scrutiny but also led a fairly rockstar lifestyle...
There's nothing wrong with it, but often they are famous because of their personality, and have little actual skill, including needing auto-tune or even lip-syncing performances.
The skill needed to be a rock-star is orthogonal to the skill needed to make beautiful music, and that is why those skills are worth considering separately.
If you like rock and want to feel depressed, check out the current billboard top 10 in the rock category. The golden age of rock was definitely before the advent of auto-tune. (Though even the Beatles could have benefited from being more in tune).
if only to get a fair view as many find Valentina Lisitsa.. questionable.
In any case I feel like people either really like or dislike her. My piano teacher absolutely hates her playing, while she's my friend's favorite pianist.
If we're listing Liszt pianists, I think John Ogdon should be up there (his B minor sonata is how I finally "understood" the piece) as well as Richter and maybe Argerich and Brendel (for his Annees de Pelerinage).
Why do people find Lisitsa's playing questionable? I understand there's controversy behind her political views but I'm not sure what the problem is with her playing.
My general problem with many famous pianists is they get too much into the flash - at certain moments you will hear a wall of sound as they throw clarity and rhythmic pulse out the window. But her interpretation of La Campanella seemed to have less of that than Kissin's.
I think generally they just find her interpretations to be in poor taste?
My impression is that people who weren't really into classical music before listening to her are more likely to like her, whereas people who have followed classical music for a long time are less likely to. I suspect it has something to do with how they consider certain music should be played. As far as I know, she was relatively unknown until she posted some videos on YouTube.
Personally I'm not a big fan of her but I don't dislike her; she certain is a much better player than I am and I have no issue listening to her playing. My teacher absolutely abhors her playing though..
I sat in on a masterclass where a student played this piece. The instructor was this surly, ancient old lady, and pretty famous concert pianist, who proceeded to scream at the poor kid playing the piece, calling him a 'show off' and a 'jock.' She forced him to play some Beethoven piece which he knew, but hadn't prepared, which unsurprisingly he struggled with, only fueling her anger. Still today I don't think I've ever seen, in person, anyone more violently insulted on stage!
What he found was a tiny court with few resources, a town of crippling conventionality and an immediate hostility to himself and his type
But somehow Weimar represents Liszt at his greatest.
I had to smile, in a way this is still the case. The open and immediate hostility is now more a skepticism. But there are a lot of reasons to stay in Weimar.
There are even start ups in and around Weimar (Erfurt, Jena, Ilmenau) although a lot of those is more traditional entrepreneurship in the optical or medical area, rather than software. But don't forget Intershop started in Jena and Prof Karlheinz Brandenburg, the inventor of mp3, is at the Technical University Ilmenau.
"The scale and unprecedented force of his playing demanded stronger technology from piano makers – his recitals often required two pianos, as the first was likely to be destroyed in performance."
Having only played on a modern piano, I can't even imagine how this is possible..
Modern pianos are pretty marvelous things. Think about just the tension the huge number of strings applies to the chassis. Then the force a hand is capable of delivering to the keys, with their delicate linkages connecting them to the hammers. Then think about 19th century furniture-making techniques.
String tension across the frame of a grand piano is around 17 tons. If a frame cracked and imploded it would probably kill someone. The modern piano sound is a direct result of that metal frame combined with three string courses for most of the range.
Piano design didn't really mature until around 1850. So a lot of the most famous classical piano music was composed on not-quite-there yet prototype instruments with a thinner and less powerful sound, and sometimes also a less sensitive action.
My gf had to play a vintage antique fortepiano in a production last year, and the solo sound is closer to a fat harpsichord with better dynamics and slightly random tuning than a modern piano.
It's what Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn would have played: they literally never heard their music on a modern instrument.
> Piano design didn't really mature until around 1850. So a lot of the most famous classical piano music was composed on not-quite-there yet prototype instruments with a thinner and less powerful sound, and sometimes also a less sensitive action.
This is really apparent in the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. In the original instructions, the pedal was to be held throughout the entire piece. On a piano of Beethoven's time, that would lead each chord to blend into the next without overpowering it. But if you try to do that on a modern piano, the tones are sustained for so long that all the chords get muddled together and the result is a mess.
I've seen a few concerts with "fortepiano"s. They needed to be retuned during the performance and looked very diminutive and fragile compared to a modern piano.
Haven't read the article yet, but I hope they mention Charles Valentin Alkan. When Liszt heard him play, he declared he was a better pianist. That's saying something.
"A biography of a major cultural figure should not start by sounding like a performing arts undergraduate describing themself on Twitter."
That's the quote of the article for me. I think there is way too much emphasis on Liszt the performer and his earlier symphonic music than on his later work. At the latest stage of his life, he developed an almost post-modern attitude towards the piano, as a percussion instrument rather than a melodic one, and also began experimenting with atonal music. These are two of the most dominant aspects of early modern (i.e. 20th century) music, seen in Lizst work as early as 1885.
he's one of those people in the running for 'most gifted person who ever lived' IMO
as purely a composer he's somewhat overshadowed by some of his great contemporaries, but the Piano Sonata in B Minor combines all the strengths of his music into a kind of unparalleled masterpiece with fascinating oscillations between struggle and serenity
As long as we're sharing examples of Liszt's genius, I highly recommend his transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies; Cyprien Katsaris released a 6-disc set of them and it's absolutely phenomenal[0]
He had very little jealousy towards other major creative figures, though Chopin, Schumann, Brahms and even Wagner did not always respond to him so generously. He supported the development not only of these major figures, but of fascinating minor ones such as Joachim Raff and Peter Cornelius, and any number of great pianists.
I don't get the 'yuck'. Everything else you wrote is more-or-less on the mark. He was a known celebrity. Although to a degree, we need to remember this isn't Beyonce appearing before stadiums of tens of thousands fans, but rather concert halls of about few hundreds at most. But in those days terms, it was mega stardom.
He would regularly champion Chopin's music and went so far as to write a biography of chopin himself. He was also a huge proponent of Beethoven's works and did a great deal to spread them through Europe.
As stated in the article, he made a departure from his more showy pieces in his later life, and the set which I have always been a fan of for demonstrating this are his "L'années de pèlerinage" - Years of Pilgrimage. The Brendel recordings are a good place to start.