Word: liszt
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Andre Watts, pianist, on playing the Liszt Sonata: "It's a moment of stoppage of existence, like blacking out, like I am going around the bend. It is a moment of transcendental passion. A no man's land...
Winthrop House Music Society--Planist Dragana Bajalovic plays Schubert, Schoenberg, Scriabin and Liszt. At Winthrop Tonkens Room...
...Franz Liszt, so the story goes, was having grave problems. Early 19th century pianos-not much sturdier than the delicate harpsichord-were collapsing, with great snapping of strings, beneath his monumental assault. Why not, some Viennese friends suggested, try a new piano called the Bösendorfer? The instrument, first made in 1828 by an Austrian artisan named Ignaz Bösendorfer, stood up to Liszt's crashing octaves, and the composer delightedly gave it his official endorsement. This month the venerable piano company celebrated its 150th anniversary with a series of piano recitals and a gala concert...
...compete with Steinway for the U.S. concert business. It will make Bösendorfers available across the country for performances by travel ing artists. Pianist Garrick Ohlsson has al ready gone over. But the odds are still with the Steinway: 95% of American concert pianists endorse it. Too bad Liszt is not around to judge the competition...
What he most wants to do is spend his days composing. Since childhood, he has written more than 700 works. None of his adult compositions has been heard ("I have had enough criticism as a performer," he says). But like Liszt, he writes for the piano as if it were an orchestra, aiming for as much drama and depth as possible. One work, A Picture of Dorian Gray (he admires Oscar Wilde's "razor-like mind"), is more than two hours long. As for what might have been, he says quietly, "I would have done the same so-called...