Enjoying the shores of Lake Como with Marie d’Agoult in 1837, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) immersed himself in a close reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The idea of composing a symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy, one that would combine music, poetry

Franz Liszt was born to Marie Anna Lager and Ádám Liszt on 22 October 1811. His father was a gifted amateur singer, pianist and cellist who took part in summer concerts at the Esterházy estates. He personally knew Joseph Haydn,

In 1839, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) returned to Hungary, which he had left in 1822 at age 11. In the new nationalism that was sweeping Europe, he was hailed as a true Hungarian champion. As part of his musical explorations of

In our current musical world, we can hear, literally, anything at anytime. Want a string quartet – The Kronos is on call. Want a piano recital – voilá, Lang Lang appears (if that’s who you want). A full orchestra can

It might not be a complete surprise, but Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn really didn’t like each other! Mendelssohn first heard a Liszt performance at a concert in Paris in 1825. In his opinion “Liszt had many fingers but few

The problem for Liszt was how to expand the orchestral genre into something less confining than the symphony – 4 movements, alternating slow and fast, contrasting triple section. Sigh. It’s all so old. Ok, we have the concert overture, but

Liszt’s B-minor piano sonata is regarded by many as his ultimate masterpiece and it ranks alongside other “greats” in the pantheon of piano repertoire. This was not always the case, however, and in the nineteenth century it was met with

Franz Liszt’s flamboyant personality and colorful pianistic mannerisms frequently detract from the fact that he was a highly gifted composer. What’s more, he was instrumental in establishing the intellectual foundations for a musical form that derives its movement and its