Franz Liszt's bio book #1 by Alan Walker
and we are still in the process of reading them.
Each volume has over 480 to 600 pages and the author Alan Walker’s research about Liszt’s life is fabulous !
Franz Liszt's bio books #1, #2, #3 by Alan Walker
We found many new discoveries about Liszt as a person, as a pianist & composer and his life, and his views.
He was a storm, a very expressive, passionate, unique, charming artist.
Kindhearted, very generous, caring, temper, high pride, a social person , enjoyed being on stage or with a group of people.
However, he did not sacrifice his originality and uniqueness in order to be with a group ( check out his long hair and unique sense of fashion, some kind of mixture of robin hood, zorro and pirate ) and he had a deep passion to promote great music.
Ray is saying Franz Liszt is like the Bruce Lee of piano playing.
Many composers ( and people in general ) usually care only themselves and their families, their fame, but it seems that Liszt cared more for the music than anything.
He was thinking about the future of music and besides composing music and playing it, he also liked to promote other great composers who he felt could influence future generations and future music in a good way.
He was a storm, a very expressive, passionate, unique, charming artist.
Kindhearted, very generous, caring, temper, high pride, a social person , enjoyed being on stage or with a group of people.
However, he did not sacrifice his originality and uniqueness in order to be with a group ( check out his long hair and unique sense of fashion, some kind of mixture of robin hood, zorro and pirate ) and he had a deep passion to promote great music.
Ray is saying Franz Liszt is like the Bruce Lee of piano playing.
Many composers ( and people in general ) usually care only themselves and their families, their fame, but it seems that Liszt cared more for the music than anything.
He was thinking about the future of music and besides composing music and playing it, he also liked to promote other great composers who he felt could influence future generations and future music in a good way.
Very wide scale of view.
For example, Liszt promoted Saint Saens’ and Chopin’s music and he wrote the world’s first biography of Chopin.
Also, I was surprised to read that Liszt was helping Richard Wagner financially many times and also when Wagner was struggling.
Some parts of his dealings with Wagner made me feel like why was it that Liszt wanted to help someone like Wagner, who seems only cared for himself.
Is it because Wagner was a genius composer who created great music ??
Whenever Liszt found new wonderful composers he was always excited to talk about them to other composers who were his friends, because he cared uppermost for music, but other composers such as Wagner, Berlioz, Schumann, had some feelings of rivalry and didn’t always enjoy hearing Liszt praise the music of other composers.
One of the mysteries about Liszt is how he could be always be so confident performing on stage.
He was the inventor of the solo Piano concert , and he toured alone, seemingly without getting stage fright which many pianists have.
I’ve read about that most performers of any kind, whether it be pianists, theatre, ballet, acting, athletes and etc…get some form of stage fright, even if they trained or practiced excellently.
Even such an amazing pianist & composer as Frederic Chopin had that issue.
But Liszt seems to have never had the issue and could not understand his students feeling of fear to perform in front of music elites.
Even his most talented students would get nervous and one of them stopped playing in the middle of an important recital.
In general, people may not understand things which they have never experienced.
And in Liszt’s case, since he seems to have not experienced stage fright, he simply could not understand why anyone else would, and he didn’t seem to know how to help his students out of it.
The more I know about Liszt’s character, the more I found he is so different and far from my personality and feel very mystery, but very interesting person.
And while reading it, I feel Chopin’s personality may be similar to me in many ways.
For Liszt, seems like Chopin type of person is mysterious.
I really feel Chopin described Liszt’s image and character excellently through his music “ Revolutionary Etude “ which Chopin dedicated to Liszt ( Chopin dedicated the whole set of his first etudes, including the “ Revolutionary “ to Liszt.)
In this music, left hand side requires constant moving, fast as a storm, the music is very powerful and impressive.
Also I believe it’s one of the most difficult pieces to play, needs to be performed well balanced between emotion and technique, with almost no break time for left hand.
Like this music , the “ Revolutionary Etude “ , Liszt seems always constantly moving ,with expressive gestures using both hands.
It was hilarious to read about when Liszt started orchestra conducting, he was conducting the orchestra using his whole body including arms, hands.
From eyewitness accounts, his expression seems to have been really dynamic, so much so, that the audience was watching Liszt more than the orchestra .
When the music demanded forte, Liszt would outstretch his body fully upright with arms high above his head, with dramatic movements.
When the music called for orchestra to play softly, Liszt would crouch the upper part of his body down low on the podium, as if peeking from the podium with only eyes showing.
There is a hilarious cartoon of that time period ( the image above ), which shows the above description of his conducting.
I suppose his piano playing performances may have been no different, must have been huge impact just from watching his movements during the performance.
Very passionate artist.
I’m still in the process of reading, and there are so many things I want to write about Liszt and his life.