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Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar
- rifung 10y ago"The scale and unprecedented force of his playing demanded stronger technology from piano makers – his recitals often required two pianos, as the first was likely to be destroyed in performance." Having only played on a modern piano, I can't even imagine how this is possible..
- scrumper 10y agoModern pianos are pretty marvelous things. Think about just the tension the huge number of strings applies to the chassis. Then the force a hand is capable of delivering to the keys, with their delicate linkages connecting them to the hammers. Then think about 19th century furniture-making techniques.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoString tension across the frame of a grand piano is around 17 tons. If a frame cracked and imploded it would probably kill someone. The modern piano sound is a direct result of that metal frame combined with three string courses for most of the range. Piano design didn't really mature until around 1850. So a lot of the most famous classical piano music was composed on not-quite-there yet prototype instruments with a thinner and less powerful sound, and sometimes also a less sensitive action. My gf had to play a vintage antique fortepiano in a production last year, and the solo sound is closer to a fat harpsichord with better dynamics and slightly random tuning than a modern piano. It's what Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn would have played: they literally never heard their music on a modern instrument.
- antognini 10y ago> Piano design didn't really mature until around 1850. So a lot of the most famous classical piano music was composed on not-quite-there yet prototype instruments with a thinner and less powerful sound, and sometimes also a less sensitive action. This is really apparent in the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. In the original instructions, the pedal was to be held throughout the entire piece. On a piano of Beethoven's time, that would lead each chord to blend into the next without overpowering it. But if you try to do that on a modern piano, the tones are sustained for so long that all the chords get muddled together and the result is a mess.
- erez 10y agoI've seen a few concerts with "fortepiano"s. They needed to be retuned during the performance and looked very diminutive and fragile compared to a modern piano.
- yomly 10y agoA really interesting character, it's easy to assume the trope of him being a superficial virtuosic performer / rockstar but that is to miss the man who was deeply committed to music. He would regularly champion Chopin's music and went so far as to write a biography of chopin himself. He was also a huge proponent of Beethoven's works and did a great deal to spread them through Europe. As stated in the article, he made a departure from his more showy pieces in his later life, and the set which I have always been a fan of for demonstrating this are his "L'années de pèlerinage" - Years of Pilgrimage. The Brendel recordings are a good place to start.
- jksmith 10y agoWhat's wrong with being a rock star? Article wreaks a bit from being haughty.
- ktRolster 10y agoThere's nothing wrong with it, but often they are famous because of their personality, and have little actual skill, including needing auto-tune or even lip-syncing performances. The skill needed to be a rock-star is orthogonal to the skill needed to make beautiful music, and that is why those skills are worth considering separately.
- girvo 10y ago> but often they are famous because of their personality, and have little actual skill, including needing auto-tune or even lip-syncing performances. So, we're being haughty then. Because that's... painting in broad strokes, to say the least.
- ktRolster 10y ago>So, we're being haughty then Well good, you've reached the second level on the hierarchy of disagreement: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy... Do you have something more substantial to say, or is that it?
- Jun8 10y agoHis Paganini Etude No 3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_campanella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_campanella) is astonishing! You can see Valentina Lisitsa play it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY_eIIFqNxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY_eIIFqNxg) and wonder how is this thing even playable.
- orthoganol 10y agoI sat in on a masterclass where a student played this piece. The instructor was this surly, ancient old lady, and pretty famous concert pianist, who proceeded to scream at the poor kid playing the piece, calling him a 'show off' and a 'jock.' She forced him to play some Beethoven piece which he knew, but hadn't prepared, which unsurprisingly he struggled with, only fueling her anger. Still today I don't think I've ever seen, in person, anyone more violently insulted on stage!
- ktRolster 10y agoThe instructor was this surly, ancient old lady, and pretty famous concert pianist Who?
- snake117 10y agoI was just going to mention La Campanella! My favorite performance is by Dimitrij Romanov (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ABQFNCFCkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ABQFNCFCkY). Also, his performance of the first etude (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM_IWEe6AYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM_IWEe6AYQ) blows me away when he plays the first series of tremolos with only one hand. I just also have to say that one of my favorite performers and one of my greatest inspirations is Georges Cziffra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cziffra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cziffra). His performance of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L0Rncqx1yQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L0Rncqx1yQ) is one of the greatest performances I have ever heard.
- rifung 10y agoI'd recommend people also watch Evgeny Kissin play it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0U73NRSIkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0U73NRSIkw if only to get a fair view as many find Valentina Lisitsa.. questionable. In any case I feel like people either really like or dislike her. My piano teacher absolutely hates her playing, while she's my friend's favorite pianist. Another piece I'd recommend is also Liszt's Mephisto Waltz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9JbNgPsAkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9JbNgPsAkg
- intopieces 10y agoAs long as we're sharing examples of Liszt's genius, I highly recommend his transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies; Cyprien Katsaris released a 6-disc set of them and it's absolutely phenomenal[0] [0]https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Liszt-Symphonies-Piano-Transcriptions/dp/B0000D8HDF https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Liszt-Symphonies-Piano-Tran...
- adrusi 10y agoI listened to this podcast about Liszt a few months ago and recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/lisztomania/ http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/lisztomania/
- Tycho 10y agohe's one of those people in the running for 'most gifted person who ever lived' IMO as purely a composer he's somewhat overshadowed by some of his great contemporaries, but the Piano Sonata in B Minor combines all the strengths of his music into a kind of unparalleled masterpiece with fascinating oscillations between struggle and serenity
- dpkp 10y agoExtremely negative review -- wow.
- ktRolster 10y agoThe negativeness, of course, being towards the book, and not the man Liszt.
- Ericson2314 10y agoHeh everybody else talking about the man himself leads me to think few actually read this.
- shanacarp 10y agoI remember a professor describing him. He's basically a male beyonce. Women tried to steal his underwear. He broke a hand? Arm? and did a virtuoso performance with just one hand. The world went crazy. I don't fully get it to this day. (never been that much of a piano lover) yuck.
- erez 10y agoI don't get the 'yuck'. Everything else you wrote is more-or-less on the mark. He was a known celebrity. Although to a degree, we need to remember this isn't Beyonce appearing before stadiums of tens of thousands fans, but rather concert halls of about few hundreds at most. But in those days terms, it was mega stardom.
- pjc50 10y ago> basically a male beyonce High praise indeed!
- erez 10y agoI'm not thinking style, or quality of music, but stardom. If this was the late 80's we'd use Madonna, or the mid-60's Beatles etc.
- ktRolster 10y agoGood to learn from him: He had very little jealousy towards other major creative figures, though Chopin, Schumann, Brahms and even Wagner did not always respond to him so generously. He supported the development not only of these major figures, but of fascinating minor ones such as Joachim Raff and Peter Cornelius, and any number of great pianists.
- smortaz 10y agoHaven't read the article yet, but I hope they mention Charles Valentin Alkan. When Liszt heard him play, he declared he was a better pianist. That's saying something. Samples of his writing: https://youtu.be/QFXBbhutUsk https://youtu.be/QFXBbhutUsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sotFMQRZCx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sotFMQRZCx0
- hellofunk 10y agoEh. I vastly prefer Liszt's melodies and harmonic transitions. Alkan's music is just like listening to scales.
- edem 10y agoHe is actually Hungarian and should be called "Liszt Ferenc". "Liszt" means flour in Hungarian by the way so it is like "Frank Flour".
- CptMauli 10y agoWhat he found was a tiny court with few resources, a town of crippling conventionality and an immediate hostility to himself and his type But somehow Weimar represents Liszt at his greatest. I had to smile, in a way this is still the case. The open and immediate hostility is now more a skepticism. But there are a lot of reasons to stay in Weimar. For the Hacker News crowd interesting is, maybe, that Weimar even has a hacker space: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Maschinenraum https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Maschinenraum There are even start ups in and around Weimar (Erfurt, Jena, Ilmenau) although a lot of those is more traditional entrepreneurship in the optical or medical area, rather than software. But don't forget Intershop started in Jena and Prof Karlheinz Brandenburg, the inventor of mp3, is at the Technical University Ilmenau.
- erez 10y ago"A biography of a major cultural figure should not start by sounding like a performing arts undergraduate describing themself on Twitter." That's the quote of the article for me. I think there is way too much emphasis on Liszt the performer and his earlier symphonic music than on his later work. At the latest stage of his life, he developed an almost post-modern attitude towards the piano, as a percussion instrument rather than a melodic one, and also began experimenting with atonal music. These are two of the most dominant aspects of early modern (i.e. 20th century) music, seen in Lizst work as early as 1885.