Word: liszt
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...written 15 songs for the poems of Hans Christian Andersen," he shyly admits. Cries Nordraak, eagerly: "Has Hans heard these?" Later, Grieg's wife Nina (Florence Henderson) sighs: "How do you suppose the others managed?" Replies a piano salesman played by Edward G. Robinson: "You mean Schubert and Liszt, for example?" When Grieg enters the Scandinavian Club in Rome, the clerk informs him, "A countryman of yours was asking for you." Grieg asks, "Who's that?" Replies the clerk: "Mr. Ibsen...
...producers of this masterpiece have not been good enough to include the music, with the exception of a brief snatch of the "Liszt" Grubelei, which they compare to a cadenza from the third Liebestraum. Humphrey Searle comments on the comparison that Mrs. Brown's product is so much like Liszt's that it must be authentic. And so it is. It is in fact almost a direct copy, with slight changes in time signature and some minor details. In short, the sort of thing a somewhat untalented musician might come up with when assigned to imitate Liszt's style...
...those who do not believe, the whole thing is clearly a case of chicanery for profit and fame. The Philips contract has brought Rosemary $2,000 to $3,000 but can be expected to earn more. If Rosemary is in touch with Liszt, the best way to prove it is not to produce the lukewarm but pleasant Grubelei she claims to have received from him, but to discover something from the past, perhaps Liszt's now vanished manual of piano technique, which he wrote for the Geneva Conservatoire. The spirits that mediums raise always inconveniently refuse to answer...
Everyone loves a mystery. Whichever side one takes on the question of communication with the dead, Rosemary is clearly a musical mystery. There is the music itself, a great deal of it, including, on the new record alone, eight works that she claims are by Liszt, three by Chopin and one each by Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Brahms, Grieg and Schumann. The pieces all are characteristic of their alleged composers. Some of them are good enough to have been written by a Liszt or a Beethoven in a nodding moment, though they also suggest the possibility of highly skilled parody...
Outright acceptance of the possibility that she is really in touch with Liszt and friends is, naturally, rare. But at press conferences and confrontations, Rosemary regularly disarms reporters and cynics with her modesty ("I only take what comes") and her homely use of detail. "We would call Debussy a hippie today," she adds. "He tells me he does much more painting than music." Liszt, she says, often accompanies her on shopping trips and once checked up on the price of bananas; Chopin has become a TV addict, though he disapproves of much that appears on the BBC. "When Schubert first...