Word: franz
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Sacheverell?that they had genius enough for two. If Sacheverell's latest book does not show the full two-thirds that is his family share, it does reveal him as a conscientious, able biographer who has brought back to life one of music's grandest, most glittering figures?Franz Liszt...
Musically the first part of the 19th Century was an age of virtuosity. Berlioz, writing for the orchestra, mysteriously made instruments sound as they had never sounded before. And not even Rubinstein ever played the piano like Franz Liszt. When Chopin heard Liszt he wrote: "I wish I could steal from him the way to play my own etudes...
...music-loving Hungarian steward to a princely house, Franz Liszt was an infant prodigy. When he was 11, deaf old Beethoven is reported to have kissed him for his playing. Liszt's father took him to Paris, where he studied, gave public and private concerts, astounded all comers. He was fair, good-looking, wore long hair. Father Liszt knew what he was talking about when he said: "With you, it is women I am afraid...
...Young Franz's first serious love affair was with Marie Catherine, Countess d'Agoult, a beauteous unmusical mother of three, whose elderly husband bored her. The year was 1833. She was 28, he, 22. They ran away to Geneva, spent eleven years of romantic vagabondage interrupted only by his concert tours. She bore him three illegitimate children of whom Cosima (named after Lake Como) was to achieve fame by deserting her devoted husband to marry his dearest friend, Richard Wagner...
...Paris greeted him hysterically. This time London, too, was cordial; Victoria invited him to Windsor Castle. All Europe held concerts in his honor. On his way from Luxembourg to Bayreuth to hear Tristan a honeymooning couple entered his second-class compartment, leaned gaily out of the open window. Franz Liszt caught a chill. At Bayreuth it developed into pneumonia. His last word: "Tristan!" The Princess died a year later...