Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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.
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.
So, we're being haughty then. Because that's... painting in broad strokes, to say the least.
>So, we're being haughty then
Do you have something more substantial to say, or is that it?
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...
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).
When you listen to his compositions it becomes impossible to assume that:
"Piano Sonata in B minor" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfHgLyuO0hY
This is no composition by just a virtuosic performer. It has huge emotional depth. It's a spiritual meditation.
Who?
I just also have to say that one of my favorite performers and one of my greatest inspirations is Georges Cziffra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cziffra). His performance of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L0Rncqx1yQ) is one of the greatest performances I have ever heard.
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.
Another piece I'd recommend is also Liszt's Mephisto Waltz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9JbNgPsAkg
Ogdon's Campanella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6aLKPtF6uc Ogdon's B minor sonata, IMO the magnum opus of Liszt's life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q1tNCVGpt0&t=6m Richter's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc4hJtKm278 Argerich's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n04GkRTC_Lo Brendel's Deuxieme Annee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-XjrjzXjjA&list=PL9D990D86C...
And for a totally different take on the latter, also listen to Bolet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVxEG12-1Ps) and Lipatti (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzn2fkUdUnI).
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.
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..
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.
For the Hacker News crowd interesting is, maybe, that Weimar even has a hacker space: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Maschinenraum
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.
Having only played on a modern piano, I can't even imagine how this is possible..
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.
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.
Samples of his writing:
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.
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
[0]https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Liszt-Symphonies-Piano-Tran...
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.