Many things that we all take for granted today we owe to Franz Liszt. He invented the solo piano recital. Before his time, and before he brought his inimitable charisma to the world of the piano,  it was inconceivable that any artist of the piano could hold the audience’s attention for an entire recital with only piano music. He was the first musician to consistently play from memory at concerts. He gave us the modern piano recital setup where the pianist sits in profile to the audience. Before this, the pianist either had his back to the audience, or the piano was turned in such a way that you couldn’t see the pianist at all. Along with the violinist Paganini, Liszt was probably the first musician “superstar”, yet his fame and reputation spread like that of no musician before him. As a composer he was constantly breaking new ground and invented the Symphonic Poem, the piano “Paraphrase”, and ushered in a new era of music with his new forms of harmony. Throughout his life Liszt was a selfless promoter of other composers’ music and careers, while he hardly ever promoted himself or his own music. Artists he helped promote into recognition in his lifetime include Chopin, Berlioz, Bülow, Schumann, Wagner, and many, many others whose names we might not know had it not been for Liszt. But who was this man, a Hungarian pianist who came from the countryside of the Kingdom of Hungary and took the world by storm? 

Franz Liszt was born in Doborján in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1811 to Ana Liszt and and Ádám Liszt. His father, Ádám Liszt was in the Service of the Hungarian nobleman Prince Niklaus II of Esterházy of the famous Esterházy family. Ádám Liszt was a true Renaissance man, with the ability to play several musical instruments including the piano, cello, and violin. He was educated and knowledgeable in several fields including philosophy-having studied philosophy at the Hungarian University of Pozsony. Because of his life at court, Ádám Liszt knew several renowned musicians personally, not least of all Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven. A very ambitious man, he wanted nothing but the best for his son, and most likely wanted his son to have the career he never had.  Franz Liszt’s first music teacher was truly his father Ádám. Realizing his son’s talents, Ádám moved with Liszt to Vienna, just a few blocks away from where Franz Schubert lived. In Vienna, Liszt studied with Czerny (himself previously a student of Beethoven) as well as composition with Paer and Salieri (a contemporary of Mozart’s). Liszt also played for Beethoven, who was then near the end of his life. Liszt and his father travelled to Paris, where Liszt was not allowed to enroll in the famed Conservatoire because of his Hungarian heritage. Liszt’s fame grew, and he toured throughout Europe with his father serving as his manager and promoter, until his father’s shocking and untimely death in 1827 when Liszt was 15.

After his father death, without his genius as a manager, Liszt’s concert touring career fell apart, and he lived in a small apartment in Paris with his mother, making a living teaching piano lessons to the children of wealthy aristocrats. Throughout his life, Liszt had a desire to join the church, being a very religious man, and this period was no different, but he decided against it for the moment. His father Ádám had himself joined the Franciscan Order for two years in his youth, and that was probably why he was inspired to name his son Franz (Ferenc). In Paris, he became acquainted with all the great artistic personalities including Victor Hugo and Heinrich Heine, Hector Berlioz, and Niccolò Paganini, and promoted the career of his friend Frédéric Chopin when he first came to Paris in 1830. By this time, his own career had been revived and Liszt had arrived once again to the limelight of the Paris salons. He was gaining recognition as a virtuoso of the piano the likes of which the world had never seen, but at this period Liszt was still primarily known as a performer and not a composer.

By 1833, Liszt was having an affair with Countess Marie D’Agoult, and in 1835 she shockingly left her husband and Parisian society to live in sin with Liszt, divorces being extremely rare in those days. It is a testament to the power of their love, that they would live completely without the blessing of the harsh society of those days, with Marie completely ostracized from the noble society she had lived in all of her life. For the next few years they lived mostly in Switzerland and Italy, in years Liszt fondly remembered as “Années de Pèlerinage”. Those first few years with Marie were absolutely blissful. Liszt’s creative compositional output exploded during this time, and he famously set to music the “Petrarca sonnets” as well as numerous other well-known early Liszt pieces. With Marie D’Agoult Liszt had 3 children Cosima Liszt (later the husband of both Hans von Bülow, and Richard Wagner, Daniel Liszt, and Blandine Liszt. 

In addition to this new compositional output, Liszt’s concert career took off like never before and he toured Europe as the greatest musical sensation of his day. “Lisztomania” was the term coined by Heinrich Heine for the frenzy that his performances created among his fans–particularly his female fans. The only comparison to the modern world would be the adulation and fame that Elvis Presley or The Beatles received from their fans. Critics of the day actually regarded “Liszt Fever” as it was sometimes called, as a real disease that was spreading across Europe, as nobody had ever seen anything like this level of enthusiasm for a performer before. Women would faint during his concerts, rummage through his garbage, cut locks from his hair, steal his handkerchiefs, etc. Liszt gave very much of the proceeds from his concerts to charity, and often organized concerts specifically for a special cause, such as for relief for the Hungarian floods of 1839 in Budapest. In 1844, Liszt and Marie D’Agoult broke off their relationship for the last time, after a period of serious disagreements.

Liszt’s touring took him all across Europe, from England to Spain, Budapest to Istanbul, and he even made a grand Russian tour, all in an age when he had to travel in a carriage on the bumpy roads of the day for hundreds and hundreds of miles. In 1847, Liszt played in Kiev, in modern day Ukraine, and met Polish Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who would play a huge part in the next phase of his life. She would become the love of Liszt’s life, and his partner in life for over the next decade. 

Carolyn, like Marie D’Agoult, was married and an established member of the aristocracy. Liszt retired from his concertizing at the age of 35, when he was at his height of fame and technical prowess, and moved to Weimar with Carolyn, where he was given the title of Kappelmeister by Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia.  This was an honor that meant he was the leading musician of Weimar, but also a practical post which entailed his running of the musical events of the city, including the Weimar orchestra and opera, which he frequently conducted. It also entailed a lot of stressful work, including programming, budget, politics, paperwork, and organizational skills. It was during this period that he created a home in Weimar with Carolyn and settled into his post as Kappelmeister while they awaited a divorce from her husband–they even appealed directly to the pope and a special appeal to the Russian Tsar, but the process was long and hopeless, and the divorce was never granted, despite over a decade of attempts. During this period, Liszt began to focus on composition, and in particular orchestral composition. As Kappelmeister, Liszt also had access to the Weimar orchestra, and for the first time had an orchestra on hand to test his orchestral compositions out. Also at this time, Liszt took Richard Wagner under his wing. Although they were roughly the same age, Liszt became a father-figure to Wagner, and a great champion and promoter of Wagner’s music. In Weimar, Liszt frequently scheduled Wagner operas and orchestral pieces in a time when Wagner was a little known composer who very few people had even heard of. Because of Liszt’s influence in the musical world, we now know the name of Richard Wagner and his music, but without his help, it’s possible Wagner would have faded into musical oblivion. Wagner even eventually married Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. 

Liszt was no stranger to tragedy: In 1859, his son Daniel Liszt died at 20, and in 1862 his daughter Blandine died at 26. In 1861, after receiving approval to marry from the Pope directly, Carolyn’s husband and the Tsar of Russia banded together and forbid the Pope and the Vatican from performing the marriage of Liszt and Carolyn. Shortly after this finale hope and despair, the couple separated. She was probably the love of Liszt’s life, and had spent more time with him than any other woman. Liszt could not marry her, and it should be noted Liszt never married. Being a religious man, always drawn to the church, Liszt decided to move to Rome and live a secluded, religious life. He entered the Monastery Madonna della Rosario outside of Rome. After this, Liszt was often referred to as the Abbé Liszt, having taken up some degree of religious orders. The rest of his life he divided his time between Rome, Weimar, and Budapest, in what he called his “vie trifurquée” or tripartite existence. He devoted much time to teaching and passing on his performance and compositional knowledge to the next generation. In Budapest, he founded the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where Christina Kiss attended, and which still stands today as one of the leading conservatories in Europe and the world. His apartment in Budapest still stands and is a Liszt museum to this day. Liszt remained in robust health until 1881, when he fell down a staircase in Weimar. He continued traveling between Weimar, Rome, and Budapest for the next few years. Then, in 1886, when traveling from Weimar to visit his daughter Cosima in Bayreuth by train, he gave up his first class train ticket to a young newlywed couple, and travelled in coach, where all the windows were open and he was cold. He caught cold, and died of Pneumonia shortly thereafter in Bayreuth. He was buried in Bayreuth, against the wishes of his will.

Through his whole life Liszt demonstrated his generosity towards his fellow musicians, and his fellow man. So many of his concerts’ proceeds were given to charity. In the aristocracy-dominated times he lived in, there was a saying “Noblesse Oblige” meaning that somebody of noble birth had an obligation to live up to their nobility and also to help those less fortunate and with less opportunities of life. Liszt coined the phrase “Génie Oblige” believing that those fortunate enough to have talent or genius had an obligation to not only live the strenuous life of an artist and perform and create music as they were meant to, but to help the people of the world, and make the world a better place by using his gifts for the benefit of humanity. He always felt there was something more important than himself, and this is what kept him going on such a strenuous schedule for almost his whole life. 

Throughout his life, though he spent so much time traveling across Europe, Liszt always considered Hungary his homeland, and was very proud of his Hungarian heritage. He is a great source of pride for all of the Hungarian people to this day. His most famous works continue to be widely played, and Christina’s Liszt cycle is committed to keeping his memory alive as well as introducing the world to all the hidden gems in the Liszt catalogue. As the greatest pianistic virtuoso of all time, nobody understood the piano as Liszt did, and so nobody composed better for the piano than Liszt. And nobody understands Liszt better than his foremost interpreter, Christina Kiss.