Word: liszt
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...mainly the image of Liszt as music's first international superstar, and one of the Romantic Century's great Don Juans, that remains fixed in our collective memory: a slim, strikingly handsome six-footer with a flowing mane of shoulder-length hair, a piano conjurer able to summon near orchestral effects and rouse audiences to such frenzied emotional states that the poet Heinrich Heine coined the term "Lisztomania." "I think I laughed--laughed like an idiot" is how Edvard Grieg described his ecstatic reaction to Liszt's playing. George Eliot's recorded impressions of Liszt come very close to swooning...
Confronted by such a charismatic figure, and in the face of such extraordinary raves, it's not surprising that critics have too frequently overlooked--or even denigrated--the quality of Liszt's mind and nature, the range of his work and influence, his greatness as a composer. Indeed, no other composer of the 19th century has been so copiously written about and so little understood, which is why the final volume of Alan Walker's superb three-volume biography, Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886 (Knopf; 594 pages; $50), is so welcome...
What distinguishes Walker from Liszt's dozens of earlier biographers is that he is equally strong on the music and the life. A formidable musicologist with a lively polemical style, he discusses the composer's works with greater understanding and clarity than any previous biographer. And whereas many have recycled the same erroneous, often damaging information, Walker has relied on his own prodigious, globe-trotting research, a project spanning 25 years. The result is a textured portrait of Liszt and his times without rival...
...Walker sees it, one of the biggest obstacles in coming to terms with Liszt is the man's protean nature, which invites the common misapprehension of him as superficial. But as Walker's gripping narrative unfolds throughout the three volumes, the astounding depth as well as breadth of Liszt's legacy emerges. Yes, he was a sensualist, but it was also Liszt, tireless in his charity work, who invented the benefit concert, who realized the piano's vast potential and created the modern piano recital, who became the first modern conductor, concerned with musical lines, color and expression rather than...
...worth remembering that the intersection of sex and art is the foundation on which much classical music was originally made. Over the past 175 years, a dashing, Byronic image was eagerly sought after by many of the important figures in composition and performance. Franz Liszt, devastatingly handsome, was the most famous lover in Europe as well the greatest pianist; women fought over the cigar butts he left on the piano after a concert. Leopold Stokowski, the great conductor who shook Mickey Mouse's hand in Fantasia, used to ensure that the lighting at his concerts highlighted his aquiline countenance...