Miho's favorites

We have been curious to see the movie “ Desire for Love“ about Chopin and finally we watched it last weekend. This story is about the relationship between Frederic Chopin and George Sand and her children. The title “ Desire for love “ exactly fits with the story. This is not a full bio about Chopin’s life and his music, ( although the soundtrack is absolutely awesome, with masterful performances of Chopin’s music by top pianists ), but mainly focuses on Chopin’s life after he met George Sand and their relationship. But Ray and I both actually really enjoyed it and watched it three times already. It’s impossible to show all the details of Chopin’s life, and even his relationship with George Sand within 2 hours. For casting, we both thought all the casts they used for this movie was good with great acting, except for Franz Liszt. And this is my only Con for this movie is that the actor they used to play Franz Liszt did not fit him at all. IMO, his image doesn’t fit with

  More about Franz Liszt ! Because it’s Liszt’s 200th celebration year and Liszt’s 200th birthday ( October 22 ) will be coming very soon !    Liszt was   Sun : Libra     Moon : Sagittarius     According to his astrology sign.    He grew up as an only child .    While looking for more about Franz Liszt, I found an incredibly detailed description of how Liszt looked and how he performed in concert , and why he could hypnotize his audiences at the link below.      http://www.blogger.com/www.oldandsold.com/opera/music-2.shtml       It's from a music magazine in the early 1900's .    Their memory of Liszt was more recent and clear, because it wasn't too long ago at that time, so it's a very interesting description.          “ 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,

  Franz Liszt was quite tall in his generation, standing 6 feet 2 inches tall , long blonde hair , piercing sharp eyes, pianist' long narrow and delicate hands and fingers. His body build was very slender. People who knew him described his personality as full of charm, charisma, and very knowledgeable.  And he loved brainy women. He was the consummate artist. It seems that Liszt loved dangerous love , which thrilled him and gave him excitement rather than a stable, peaceful , safe love. Franz Liszt While reading about his biography, I was wondering why he fell in love with two princesses who were already married. Marie D’Agoult He seems to have had a lot of love affairs in his life, someone found out that he had at least 26 serious relationships in his life ( besides countless other affairs ) but the only ladies he thought about marriage was with these two princesses , Marie D’Agoult and Carolyne Sayn Wittgenstein ? Charlotte Von Hagn L

Franz Liszt's bio book #1 by Alan Walker Franz Liszt ’s long bio books by Alan Walker arrived here several days ago ! 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 p

Continued from “ Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin’s friendship Part 1”. On 26th of April, 1841 Chopin gave another concert in Salle Pleyel in Paris on which Liszt wrote a long review , published in the Revue et Gazette Muscale, that left itself open to varying interpretations. While Liszt expressed his admiration for his fellow artist, Chopin and his circle of friends, and his family members, were upset about some parts of his review. They were upset by the fact that Liszt did not praise Chopin as a composer, and failed entirely to mention the opus 38 Ballad in F major , opus 40 Polonaise in A major , and opus 39 Scherzo in C sharp minor , all of which Chopin had performed as part of the program. At the same time, Lisztomania was spreading like wildfire. Wherever he performed, audiences were awestruck by Liszt’s breathtaking virtuosity and style, and the audiences reveled and raved, quite beside themselves with wonder and enthusiasm. Very few artists are able to

Frederyk Chopin   I’m a long time fan of Chopin’s music since when I was a teenager. Started loving his music from hearing his Polonaise , then Noctunes , Etudes … Frederyk Chopin I was using one of Chopin’s Nocturnes as my background music for my answering machine when I was in my 20s. In Japan, many of his music is famous and used in many TV dramas, commercials, movies, and mostly wealthy bourgeois family scenes. My image of many of Chopin ’s music that I’ve listened to is of a cozy, bourgeois world. From almost all his music I’ve ever heard, I often pictured an elegant, wealthy family’s world or a story about a family who are living in a luxury antique style house. Many of Mozart ’s music reminds me of a social life in an older generation, a story about bourgeois world in a gorgeous luxury palace. For Liszt ’s music, his music is very variety, ranging from an image of a sweet passionate love story for couples, all the way to nightmare horror story type of mu

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns ( 1835 – 1921) Calimille Saint-Saens is my favorite French composer of The Romantic Era. However my discovery about him was late, I discovered about him since I started watching figure skating. Even though I had heard his famous music “ The Swan “ before, I didn’t know Saint Saens was the composer of this beautiful music. I had thought this music was by Tchaikovsky , and that it was a part of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet music “ Swan Lake “. I don’t know why I got such an idea and had been believing that without checking who is the composer of “ The Swan “. Maybe I was making my own original story in my mind about “The Swan“. The first time I discovered about Saint-Saens was since I watched Johnny Weir ’s 2004 - 2005 short program performance “ Rondo Capriccioso “ , this program is one of my top favorites of his performances ( 2004 TEB France) and I really loved the music, so I finally checked the composer of the mu