Franz Liszt vs the greatest pianists of today

[spenstar]

I consider Franz Liszt to be the greatest pianist of all time. Not only did he sight read chopin's etudes perfectly, and in a manner which even chopin was jealous of, but he also sight read Grieg's violin concerto, both the piano accompaniment and the violin part. Here is the direct quote from Grieg:

  "And what does Liszt do? He plays the whole thing , root and brach, violin and piano, nay , more for he played fuller, more broadly. The violin part got its due right in the middle of the piano part. He was literally all over the whole piano at once, without missing a note, and how he played! With grandeur, beauty, genius, unique complehension. I think I laughed- laughed like a child."

Do you think any modern pianist has even come close to that kind of skill? It just seems so crazy to me that that is even possible.

[huaidongxi]

if showmanship while performing before and audience is a critical part of being a great pianist, you have an excellent argument for ol' Franz.  he inspired many accounts of his playing similar to grieg's, and that is probably much of the basis for his reputation relative to other obviously great musicians/composers/transcribers who were also piano virtuosi.  we really have limited means to verify the objectivity of historic accounts of performances.  just to name two pianists with formidable reputations both as virtuosi and ability to render orchestral or operatic scores into piano music, saint saens or sviatoslav richter.

[georgey]

I don’t know if Liszt wad the best, but I received today a CD of Lazar Berman’s 1963 recording of the 12 Transcendental Etudes that I used to listen to when I was a kid 45 years ago.  I pretend I am listening to Liszt playing.  Who knows how much better would play than Berman? I remember reading that Liszt perfectly sight read the Brahms op4 E flat minor Scherzo from Brahms sloppy writing when Brahms met Liszt I think 1853 at age 20.  This is nothing compared to the sight reading mentioned in other posts here. This was the famous visit that Brahms supposedly fell asleep during a play by Liszt of the Liszt sonata.

Edit:  I think Liszt later sent Brahms a cigarette case or something (shortly after the above event) with his name engraved as "Brams".  I don't think we know if this misspelling was intentional.

[worov]

I consider Franz Liszt to be the greatest pianist of all time. Not only did he sight read chopin's etudes perfectly, and in a manner which even chopin was jealous of, but he also sight read Grieg's violin concerto, both the piano accompaniment and the violin part. Here is the direct quote from Grieg:

That's strange. i wasn't aware that Grieg wrote a violin concerto. That's the first time ever I that I read about this work. Do you have a reference for this work , An opus number ? I can't find anything about it.

[georgey]

That's strange. i wasn't aware that Grieg wrote a violin concerto. That's the first time ever I that I read about this work. Do you have a reference for this work , An opus number ? I can't find anything about it.

Maybe its like Schumann's violin concerto that was discovered in 1930's but Grieg's has yet to be discovered?  Wait, that doesn't work since Liszt played it. Just kidding.  Maybe Grieg made concerto's out of his violin sonatas?  Not sure.  Good question though.  Someone will explain.

[worov]

Maybe Grieg made concerto's out of his violin sonatas?

I thought about this too. And somebody did an arrangement :
https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_1080/MI0003/565/MI0003565211.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_1080/MI0003/565/MI0003565212.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

But the arrangements were made by Henning Kraggerud and Bernt Simen Lund (the performers of this CD).
Not Grieg. If Grieg had made an arrangement, these guys would perform Grieg's and would make their own.

[josh93248]

One really has to wonder, either the accounts are a little embellished or Liszt was just the god of pianists period. Has anyone actually performed feats of sight reading in line with what he could do?

[worov]

I read this on Wikipedia :

In 1868, Franz Liszt, who had not yet met Grieg, wrote a testimonial for him to the Norwegian Ministry of Education, which led to Grieg's obtaining a travel grant. The two men met in Rome in 1870. On Grieg's first visit, they went over Grieg's Violin Sonata No. 1, which pleased Liszt greatly. On his second visit, in April, Grieg brought with him the manuscript of his Piano Concerto, which Liszt proceeded to sightread (including the orchestral arrangement). Liszt's rendition greatly impressed his audience, although Grieg gently pointed out to him that he played the first movement too quickly. Liszt also gave Grieg some advice on orchestration (for example, to give the melody of the second theme in the first movement to a solo trumpet).

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Grieg#Biography

Maybe you were thinking of the piano concerto in A minor ?

[philolog]

Addressing the question,
 
"Has anyone actually performed feats of sight reading in line with what he [Liszt] could do?," I would mention that John Ogden was reputed to be a fabulous sight reader and Glenn Gould also. In addition, Gould supposedly could spontaneously reduce and perform an orchestral score from memory. Personally, I believe these accounts (and those that relate to Liszt, as well), as they were recounted by reliable sources (I see no reason to accuse Grieg of public-relations hyperbole!). In my opinion, if a musician has a photographic memory and perfect pitch, as well as a finely honed technique, astounding things are possible.

One other example comes to mind: some time ago someone posted an account of Pletnev's enviable ability to more or less look at a piece and perform it in concert immediately. Ervin Nyergyhazy (not sure if I spelled that correctly) supposedly could do the same thing------he also was reputed to be a wonderful sight reader.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Yes, the anecdote pertains to the Grieg piano concerto.

Liszt is also reputed to have sightread Islamey and it is documented that he publicly sightread a piano concerto during an orchestral performance c.1840. There is also a documented anecdote of him in his teens sightreading AND transposing simultaneously whilst accompanying a singer (though to be fair, if it was fairly simplistic accompaniment this isn't actually that hard). Possibly more significantly, in Alan Walker's bio, it is reported there were only two occasions when he felt unable to sightread what was brought to him, once with a Faure piece (Ballade iirc?)  where he felt he didn't understand the music properly, and with Tausig's Das Geisterschiff, where he had to stop to work out how to play the chromatic glissando.

The most famous of modern sightreaders would undoubtedly be John Ogdon, who sightread Brahms 2 at the Proms after being engaged as an emergency last-minute substitute, reputedly sightread Boulez's second sonata (which considering it took Loriod six months to learn it really is quite incredible), and sightread live on British TV a piece of 19th century virtuoso salon music that he had just picked up in a secondhand shop.

[josh93248]

Thankyou both for the information on sight reading. I am a dreadful reader so am quite jealous of those who can do it so well haha.

[Petter]

Liszt never had to learn Ravel, Prokofiev etc, did he play any Bach?

[lostinidlewonder]

"Words cannot describe him as a pianist - he was incomparable and unapproachable. I have seen whole rows of his audience, men and women alike, affected to tears when he chose to be pathetic: in stormy passages he was able by his art to work them up to the highest pitch of excitement; through the medium of his instrument he played upon every human emotion. Rubinstein, Tausig and Bulow all admitted that they were mere children in comparison with Liszt"  Oscar Beringer.

During his concerting from Munich, Stuttgart, Strasbourg to Paris, Liszt convinces critics that even at the age of 12 he could play better than Moscheles and Hummel, the two great virtuosi of the day. Paris rhapsodized over him: reproductions of his portrait were to be seen everywhere, and the newspapers called him the second Mozart, the ninth wonder of the world.

An extraordinary and amusing account of one of Liszt's recitals was given in the autobiography of Henry Reeves. Reeves attended a concert of Liszt given in 1835:
"Liszt had already played a great fantasia of his own, and Beethoven's Twenty-seventh Sonata. After this latter piece he gasped with emotion as I took his hand and thanked him for the divine energy he had shed forth..... My chair was on the same board as the piano when the final piece began. It was a duet for two instruments beginning with his Mendelssohn's Chants sans Paroles and proceeding to a work of his own.
   ..... As the closing strains began I saw Liszt's countenance assuming that agony of expression, mingled with radiant smiles of joy, which I never saw on any other human face except in the paintings of Our Saviour by some of the early masters; his hands rushed over the keys, the floor on which I sat shook like a wire, and the whole audience were wrapped with sound when the hand and frame of the artist gave way. He fainted in the arms of the friend who was turning over the pages for him, and we bore him out in a strong fit of hysterics. The effect of this scene was really dreadful. The whole room sat breathless with fear, till Hiller came forward and announced that Liszt was already restored to consciousness and was comparatively well again. As I handed Madame de Circourt to her carriage we both trembled like poplar leaves, and I tremble scarcely less as I write this."

Liszt's style was invariably extravagant, he loved to stagger his audience with extreme velocity, terrific attack and immense power, yet his runs and arpeggios were as near perfect as any mortal could hope to get them. His brutal fortissimos often resulted in broken wires and smashed hammers, yet his more delicate passages were executed with a superb touch that could bring tears to the eyes of all emotional people.

The rising reputation of Thalberg as a pianist was party responsible for Liszt's decision to return to Paris 1836. Continued absence would have made it easy for Thalberg to challenge the great virtuoso's acknowledged supremacy. Liszt reached the French capital with the Comtesse d'Agoult in December 1836 to find Thalberg's name upon everybody's lips in all the musical circles. Undismayed, he arranged to appear at a concert being held by Berlioz, and to play his own transcriptions of various pieces by that composer. The audience, little suspecting that his technique had become even more remarkable during his absence, gathered in a sceptic frame of mind, but within fifteen minutes they were gasping with astonishment. Sir Charles Halle was present and we have his personal testimony:

"At an orchestral concert conducted by Berlioz, the March au Supplice, that most gorgeously instrumented piece, was performed, at the conclusion of which Liszt sat down and played his own arrangement, for piano alone, of the same movement, with an effect even surpassing that of the full orchestra, and creating an indescribable furore. The feat had been duly announced in the programme beforehand, a proof of his indomitable courage."

Halle remarked:
"Such marvels of executive skill and power I could never have imagined... Chopin carried you with him into a dreamland in which you would have liked to dwell forever; Liszt was all sunshine and dazzling splendour, subjugating his hearers with a power that none could withstand. From him there were no difficulties of execution, the most incredible seeming child's play under his fingers. One of the transcendent merits of his playing was the crystal-like clearness which never failed for a moment even in the most complicated and, to anybody else, impossible passages; it was as if he had photographed them in their minutest detail upon the ear of the listener. The power he drew from his instrument was such as I have never heard since, but never harsh, never suggesting 'thumping'. "

Thalberg happened to be out of Paris at this time, but he returned to the capital in the following March and arranged a concert at the Conservatoire. Liszt accepted this as a challenge and arranged one at the opera house, where to an audience many times larger than that drawn by his rival, he played Weber's  Concertstuck and his own Fantasia on Pacini's Niobe, and convinced the musical world for all time of his supremacy.

Liszt went to Venice and there he heard of the plight of the peasants who where suffering great hardships after flooding of the Danube. He played 10 concerts within a month and raised a large sum of money which he handed over for the relief of the stricken peasants. These concerts where of great artistic success and Liszt rose to even greater heights of fame.

Some idea of Liszt's fame as a pianist might be gained from an incident at Pressburg, where nobility were so unanimous in their desire to hear him play that the Prince Palatine of Hungary had to cancel a levee because he warned that it clashed with Liszt's concert, and that if he persisted in holding it on that day, nobody would attend!


Liszt's contemporary von Lenz wrote: "Liszt is a phenomenon of universal musical virtuosity.... an apparition not to be compressed within the bounds of the house drawn by schools and professors. Liszt is the past, the present, and the future of the pianoforte.... When Liszt thunders, lightens, and murmurs, the great B-flat Sonata for Hammerklavier by Beethoven, this Solomon's Song of the keyboard, there is end of all things pianistic; Liszt is making capital for humanity out of the ideas of the greatest thinker in the realm of music.

Prosniz wrote: "Liszt is the father of modern pianoforte virtuosity. He developed the capacity of the instrument to the utmost; he commanded it to sing, to whisper, to thunder. From the human voice as well as from the orchestra he borrowed effects. Daringly, triumphantly, his technique overcame all difficulties- a technique which proclaimed the unqualified dominion of the mind over the human hand."

The last 20 years of Liszt's life was spent mostly in Rome where he found plenty of activity at Weimar and frequently visited Budapest. In 1866 he went on a "jubilee Tour" to celebrate his forthcoming 75th birthday, visiting Paris on the Way to London, where he arrived on April 3rd, for a performance of St Elizabeth in the st James Hall. He attended the rehearsal on the following day, and in the evening delighted everybody by improvising brilliantly on the themes from that oratorio. On the following Wednesday it was performed under Sir Alexander Mackenzie's direction, and on the Thursday evening Liszt was received by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. He played her various works of his own and Chopin's Nocturne in B-flat minor no 1.

A great reception in his honor was given at the Grosvenor Gallery on April 8th, and once again he found it impossible to disregard requests play; he went to the piano and gave an astonishing performance of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody and the finale of Schubert's Divertissment a l'Hongroise. While he was in London he also went to a concert of his own works at Crystal Palace, dined with the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House, attended the London debut of Frederic Lamond at the St James's Hall on April 15th, and went to a gala performance of Faust at Lyceum, where he met Irving and Ellen Terry. He never saw his 75th birthday however, for later in summer he caught a chill and died at Beyreuth on July 31st. He played throughout his entire life, which to me is a very blessed pianist.
 
Hope some of this has been food for thought.