“ There was something weird and magnetic about his playing.
He was very tall, about six feet two inches, slender, with piercing eyes, very long arms, and small hands.
He played without the need of any score in front of him, and amid the most frightful difficulties of execution, he would sometimes keep his eyes fixed upon this or that person in the audience.
He moved about at the piano very much in the exciting parts, not, apparently, because of the difficulty of it, but from innate fire and excitement.
As for technical difficulties, they did not exist for Liszt.
Everything that the piano could do, seemed to be at his service, and the only regret was that the instrument was not better able to respond to his demand.
In the fortissimo passages his tone was immense, and his pianissimos were the most delicate whispers.
In these, his fingers glided over the keys with inconceivable lightness and speed, and the tone fell upon the ear with a delicate tracery with which no particular note was lost by reason of speed or lightness.
This wonderful control of the piano went equally well with his own compositions, especially adapted to his own style of playing; or with the works of the old school, which he transfigured as they had never been played before .
The essential novelties of the Liszt technique were the bravura cadenzas.
The other sensational features, such as carrying the melody in the middle range of the piano with surrounding embroidery, the rapid runs and the extravagant climaxes, were all more or less performed by the three representative virtuoso piano writers of this time period, Liszt, Chopin and Thalberg. “
His piano playing performance sounds very original and unique, besides his effortless technique plus strong emotion with expressive passionate movements.
I guess no one performs like Liszt.
We have several Liszt’s same music played by different pianists, and each one is different.
I especially wish I could hear Liszt himself playing Liebestraume ( Love dream ), La Campanella, Hungarian Rhapsody #2, Sonata B Minor and also Chopin‘s Etude ‘ Revolutionary ‘.
I feel anyone who was able to see his live piano performance was extremely lucky.
I’ve read that some of the highest level of genius pianists and musicians / composers like Liszt and Chopin, can hear the music in their head by just reading the notes, soon after reading it without even needing to play it .
When Chopin gave Liszt the music score of his Etude “ Revolutionary” which Chopin dedicated for Liszt, Liszt was so excited that right away he played it in front of him and all their friends that happened to be there.
Liszt played it excellently and Chopin was thrilled and his face became pale while watching his playing.
In Chopin’s case, when Schumann sent a score of his new composition music to Chopin, Chopin could hear the music by just reading the notes easily, and said to his friend that he didn’t like that particular piece.
I’ve never impressed much with Schumann’s music, maybe just different taste, so I understand Chopin’s feeling for it.
But I’m really impressed with this amazing ability to be able to hear the music by just reading the music notes, without playing !!
I believe Saint Saens also had this ability as well.
About Liszt’s looks ,
The article says “ He was very tall, about six feet two inches, slender, with piercing eyes, very long arms, and small hands. “
Franz Liszt
But I think as far as his hands were concerned, after seeing photos of Liszt’s hands, and from reading many other descriptions of him, it’s clear to see that they were long and narrow with long fingers.
Pianist’s hands are often described as delicate looking with long, narrow hands with thin long fingers.
And I’ve read that this classic image of a pianist’s hands came from Chopin and Liszt, because they had this type of hands.
Chopin’s hands might have been slightly even more delicate though, from seeing the photo.
And I have often heard that big hands with short thick fingers are more for athletes or worker’s hands.
I often admired pianist’s hands like Chopin and Liszt’s.
I was very surprised to know about Liszt's height. 6’2 !!!
But Liszt looks to have had a very balanced appearance.
He was also very fashionable who cared his original style including his hair.
I was wondering that no other composers hair was like Liszt.
Chopin and Mendelssohn look alike to me.
And many composers hairstyles were really similar to each other except Liszt.
A hairstyle similar to Liszt’s was very popular around 1996 to 1998 in Japan.
He really looks like a king of romantic era including total fashion.
Also, around 1980‘s, in Japan, a new romantic fashion was one of the trends at that time and many fashionable men were wearing designer’s brand’s fashion which are based on new romantic which looked like a robin hood, with hat and feather.
Especially we could see these fashionable people in the popular Disco every Friday and Saturday.
Trend fashion is often repeating every 20 to 30 years.
It would be great if romantic fashion comes back again.
But anything which is related to beauty and elegance , I would love them.