Liszt

50 Posts
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Creating a New Music World: Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasia
The Fantasia / Fantasy as a genre in the 19th century (versus the 17th-century English fantasias, which were very different) gave the composer enormous range to use his imagination on whatever he had decided to fantasize about. In Liszt’s case,
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Calming the Virtuoso’s Excesses: Anda’s Liszt
Hungarian pianist Géza Anda (1921–1976) did his first studies with Ernst von Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. In 1940, Anda won the Liszt Prize and then made his debut with the Budapest Philharmonic and
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Marrying the Symphonic Poem to the Symphony
Liszt: A Faust Symphony
Franz Liszt (1811–1886) created the genre of the symphonic poem, but they weren’t without controversy. Eduard Hanslick, the premiere critic of mid–mid-19th-century Vienna thought little of them, noting that the addition of the extra-musical programmes did not justify what he
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On This Day
28 August: Wagner’s Lohengrin Was Premiered
As soon as Richard Wagner had put the finishing touches on Lohengrin on 28 April 1848, he got embroiled in the revolutionary stirrings of the 1848 Revolutions. In Dresden, barricades were erected and the king presented with demands for democratic
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Dancing with Daemons: Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1
Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 takes the listener on a mad whirl through a town and out the other side, pushed by the piano into a frenzied dance. Liszt wrote a number of works entitled Mephisto Waltz, and they
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Pianists and Their Composers: Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt divides opinion. For some he is regarded as one of the greatest pianist-composers of the Romantic era; for others, he is a showman and a charlatan who wrote vulgar, showy music. In fact, he was a remarkable musician
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Remembering Vienna: Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne
Franz Liszt dipped into the inspirational melody pool of Schubert’s music time and again in his search for creating new sounds for the piano. Liszt wanted to both reproduce the song and, at the same time, make it a pianistic
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Musicians and Artists: Liszt, Raphael, and Michelangelo
Franz Liszt: Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) Over his life, Franz Liszt (1811–1886) travelled widely. From his start in Hungary, through his first concerts as a child, his training in Vienna, his life in Paris, living with Countess Marie
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