Overview

The greatest pianist there has ever been, an innovative, forward-looking composer, and an outstanding conductor and teacher, Franz Liszt was one of the most charismatic and sought-after figures of the nineteenth century. Amongst much else, his letters record his creative work, his travels and concerts throughout Europe, his relations with his family, and his liaisons with several remarkable women, above all the French countess and bluestocking who bore his children, and the Polish princess-described by one contemporary as 'phenomenon without equal'-who strove to become his wife. His astonishingly wide and varied acquaintances included not only popes, cardinals, kings, queens, and emperors, but also Beethoven, Alexander von Humboldt, Victor Hugo, Hector Berlioz, George Sand, Chopin, Robert and Clara Schumann, Bedrich Smetana, and most notably, Richard Wagner. Outstanding figures all, their names recur repeatedly in these fascinating and important letters, the majority of which are here made available in English for the first time.

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9780198166887

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Reviews

A biographical goldmine BBC Music Magazine, selection of the best books of 1999, December 1999 magnificently edited and finely presented book .../ ... Williams contributes a veritable gold mine of biographical sketches, providing illuminating snapshots of the principal personages addressed within. / ... one closes the book with a deeper understanding of the creative imagination and its abiding mysteries than that afforded by even the most engrossing biographies. / This is one of the most admirable contributions to Lisztian scholarship to appear for many decades./ Jeremy Siepmann, BBC Music, July 1999.

Author Information

Adrian Williams is a freelance writer and the former Secretary of the International Liszt Centre. He previously wrote Portrait of Liszt.

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