Critic's Notebook: Liszt at 200
Lang Lang's latest CD, one of many releases celebrating the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt's birth on Oct. 22, 1811, is titled "Liszt, My Piano Hero." Of course Liszt would be a hero of the...
View ArticleHappy Birthday, Liszt: why I'm now a fan of Franz
On the eve of the Hungarian pianist and composer's 200th birthday, I've finally had a Lisztian epiphany Outrageous opening ... manuscript for Liszt's Czardas Macabre in the British Library I'll be...
View ArticleAn Irishwoman's Diary
Eileen Battersby ON October 22nd 1811, a group of gypsies camped outside the small Hungarian village of Raiding near the Esterhazy estate, heard that the prince's land steward's wife had given birth to...
View ArticleRothschild’s Souffle Joins Art Treasures in Paris Show
“Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet,” wrote German poet Heinrich Heine. While penning this bon mot, the Rothschild he had in mind was James, head of his family banking empire’s...
View ArticleChicago Symphony Orchestra re-creates 1911 homage to Liszt
Updated: October 2, 2011 8:28PM Europe and Britain can be anniversary-mad in their concert programming. The Bach Year, the Beethoven Year, the Wagner Year, the Britten Year: 50th, 100th, 150th, 200th...
View ArticleHappy 200th birthday today Franz Liszt, music's first superstar
Washington, like the rest of the world, today is celebrating the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt, music's first superstar -- the greatest piano virtuoso of all time, or at least the 19th century, and a...
View ArticleNike Wagner on her great-great grandfather Liszt
Nike Wagner is the great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner and the great-great granddaughter of Franz Liszt. Raised in Bayreuth, the author is an expert on art and music, a sharp-tongued critic of the...
View ArticleWeimar celebrates Franz Liszt, the "first European artist"
Weimar, Germany - 'Now I like to first think of Weimar - my guiding star whose pleasant rays illuminate my long path,' Franz Liszt wrote to Carl Alexander, ruler of the duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach,...
View ArticleWeimar: Where the Spirit of Goethe Is Alive and Kicking
By Katrin Figge on 2:57 pm October 30, 2013. Category Features, Travel Tags: Germany, Wolfgang von Goethe One of the rooms in Friedrich Schiller’s former home. (Photo courtesy of Klassik Stiftung...
View ArticleAs Goethe's City Is Honored, Buchenwald Lurks Nearby
Festivity should be in the air. This year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Weimar's most distinguished son, Goethe. The town was selected by European ministers as the Continent's "cultural...
View ArticleClassical BriefingAlmost worthy of Goethe
| Schumann, Scenes from Goethe's Faust. Harwood, Pears, Shirley-Quirk, Fis-cher-Dieskau, Vyvyan, Palmer. Aldeburgh Festi-val Singers, English Cham-ber Orchestra, cond. Benja-min Britten. Decca 425...
View ArticleWeimar's rebirth, as a vision for the future
When a fire swept through the rococo library in this fabled city of Goethe and Schiller last year, the loss of some 30,000 books, manuscripts and irreplaceable, handwritten musical scores from the 16th...
View ArticleKen Russell on his film Lisztomania
Watch extracts from Lisztomania I like geniuses. I particularly like musical geniuses. Which is why I collected more than 2,000 classical LPs (before they melted in a fire); made documentaries or films...
View ArticleThe hot Liszt
Wagner borrowed from him, Bartók stole from him – and women kept his cigar butts in their cleavages. As Franz Liszt's 200th anniversary approaches, pianist Stephen Hough pays tribute Golden touch . . ....
View ArticleHungary: In Budapest, even the trains are playing Liszt
Everywhere you look in Hungary's capital this summer, you'll catch sight of Liszt. Adrian Mourby finds out why this city has so taken him to its heart. In Budapest this summer, you just can't move for...
View ArticleSaint or sinner, Liszt is still Budapest's favourite composer
In Budapest this summer, you just can't move for Franz Liszt. Coming out of the Parisian-style Muvesz Coffee House on Andrassy, I see the old boy seated in a niche to the right of the opera house....
View ArticleHungary: In Budapest, even the trains are playing Liszt (+video)
Everywhere you look in Hungary's capital this summer, you'll catch sight of Liszt. Adrian Mourby finds out why this city has so taken him to its heart. In Budapest this summer, you just can't move for...
View ArticleMaria Asseeva Enchants Lagos Audience Again
For the second time this year, the Italian Embassy facilitated the performance of the Russian pianist, Maria Asseeva in Lagos and Abuja. And the for a second, the renowned virtuoso enthralled Lagos...
View ArticleMETROPOLIS: Culture, contradiction and confusion
The oak tree is now just a burnt-out stump - it was hit by a bomb during the second world war. It stands in the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, the only tree not to be felled when...
View ArticleA Book of Liszts by John Spurling – review
What was it about Liszt that made women faint and fight each other? "My biography is more to be invented than written after the fact"– so wrote Franz Liszt, and so it has proved to be. Many...
View ArticleTaking liberties with Liszt
Franz Liszt was one of the defining demonic personalities of the Romantic epoch. His piano music invites an act of reckless personal investment: the invitation to inhabit Liszt the man. A great Liszt...
View ArticleWEIMAR REBORN
WEIMAR, Germany -- Weimar is a surprising splash of color and verve in the still too-often gray, bleak world of the former East Germany. Sidewalk cafes brim once again with artists, students and...
View ArticleFrance, Germany, My GPS & Me – Day Six
To truly explore Weimar, Germany, I had to use a human GPS, one by the name of Uwe Geyer. I am staying with Uwe and his wife Peggy. They grew up in this area and know it like the back of their hands....
View ArticleJust the Kind of Rulers a Dynasty Needs
The start of the dynasty was none too impressive, and so it is with some justification that Klaus Günzel, in his book on Weimar's royal rulers, describes its founding generations as "history's losers."...
View ArticleClassic conclusion
Hector Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust brings the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas' Season 2009/10 to a spectacular end. JULY was pretty good for classical music in Kuala Lumpur. From an innovative all-cello...
View ArticleFaust: damned if you do . . .
Goethe cursed attempts to set Faust to music – but composers kept trying regardless. As Terry Gilliam's version opens, Stuart Jeffries recounts a litany of depression, devils and duels Orlin Anastassov...
View ArticleSuperstar and ladies' man: Happy 200th Franz Liszt
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – He was the world's first musical superstar, a bigger-than-life personality with a wild mane of hair who seated adoring women around his piano onstage and had his own "mania" cult...
View ArticleSuperstar, ladies' man: Happy 200th Franz Liszt
He was the world's first musical superstar, a bigger-than-life personality with a wild mane of hair who seated adoring women around his piano onstage and had his own "mania" cult long before the...
View ArticleTwo musical geniuses
Feuilleton By Prof Khwaja Masud The French Revolution was the outcome of momentous social forces. It signalled the transfer of power from the feudal aristocracy to the industrial bourgeoisie. The new...
View ArticleFranz Liszt: A Romantic remembered
The first 12 days of January on BBC Radio 3 are going to feature Mozart, back-to-back. If the programmers were braver, they would have gone for Franz Liszt instead. Austrian demi-god, the first...
View ArticleOn the 'Goethe Road' in Frankfurt
enerally recognized as one of the greatest and most versatile European writers and thinkers of modern times, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, profoundly influenced the growth of literary romanticism. Best...
View ArticleCelebrating Liszt at the conservatory
SAN FRANCISCO (, ) - Franz Liszt (1811–1886) has done much more than give his illustrious name to my music school in Budapest. Along with Paganini, he was a rock star in his time (virtuoso pianist vs....
View ArticleCultural diversity
SF Classical Music Examiner rates this: Opening of Liszt's transcription of Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (from IMSLP) The two halves of Yuja Wang's piano recital last night at Herbst Theatre, the...
View ArticleWeimar: a history of culture, genocide
WEIMAR, Germany -- Weimar is considered the capital of classical German culture, home to Goethe, Schiller and Bach. The city was also the birthplace of Bauhaus modernism and of Germany's first...
View ArticleWagner in Weimar
Since Weimar's glory days as European City of Culture in 1999, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's home town has been struggling to maintain the international flair it gained five years ago. But now there's a...
View ArticleSounds of music: Eastern Germany's charming cities retain classical spirit
EISENACH, Germany - Lovers of classical music can follow the trail of geniuses such as Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Wagner in the former East Germany. The musicians lived and worked in the states of...
View ArticleWeimar: A Small Town With Big History
Out of the many things to see in the muse-kissed city of Weimar, the major tourist magnet is the home of the poet- Johann Wolfgang Goethe. And then there is another top visitor attraction -- the...
View ArticleBrahms and Liszt reconciled
During their lifetimes Brahms and Liszt represented two diametrically opposed musico-aesthetic camps. Brahms was seen as the conservative carrier of the classical and sacred Beethovenian flame. Liszt...
View ArticleAt the Ravinia Festival, A Liszt of Subtle Works
By BARRYMORE LAURENCE SCHERER Set in a bucolic park amid Chicago's northern suburbs, the Ravinia Festival—running through Sept. 11—has long been a haven of fine music, fine dining and general...
View ArticleWeimar celebrates 200th anniversary of "Lisztomania"
Weimar, Germany - The German federal state of Thuringia is planning 200 events this year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of composer Franz Liszt. Considered the most technically advanced pianist of...
View ArticleThe Wunderbar World of Weimar
Weimar’s size has always belied its moxie. When a fire ravaged the gilt-trimmed Duchess Anna Amalia Library in 2004, locals formed a human chain to save historic masterpieces that included Martin...
View ArticleBach fans petition to rescue composer's Weimar house from car park
Fans including Nobel prizewinner JM Coetzee petition to buy site where composer lived in his 20s – currently in use as a car park Bach's Weimar house was torn down months before the fall of the Berlin...
View ArticleNo Weimar without Goethe (and elephants)
I was a bit nervous as I drove into the parking lot of Weimar's premier hotel, the Elephant. Once upon a time I got a PhD in German literature and even taught the subject at university, but it had been...
View ArticleSymphony guide: Liszt's Faust Symphony
Liszt's Faust Symphony blows the bogus symphonic vs programme music debate out of the water ...
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