Search Results for: liszt

Liszt’s monster instrument

In September 1854 Liszt wrote to the cellist Bernhard Cossmann “My monster instrument with three keyboards arrived about a fortnight ago and seems to be a great success.” The 3000-pound instrument, a seven-octave grand piano plus two five-octave harmonium keyboards, … Continue reading

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Liszt and Litzmann

  Before ending his performance career with concerts in Odessa and Elizavetgrad in 1847, Franz Liszt visited Istanbul, gave a number of public concerts, and performed twice for Sultan Abdülmecit I in the Çırağan Palace. A widely reported incident in … Continue reading

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Liszt’s Totentanz

The medieval Dance of Death and variation form always belonged together, and Franz Liszt’s Totentanz is a splendid example. In the European cultural tradition, the Dies irae is closely bound up with the experience of death. Liszt’s use of motive … Continue reading

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Filed under Romantic era, Visual art

Liszt in Paris

Liszt and his parents first arrived in Paris on 11 December 1823, 190 years ago today. He was refused admittance to the Conservatoire because he was a foreigner, but within a few months the 12-year-old prodigy was the darling of … Continue reading

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Jenő Jandó, prolific pianist and Naxos Records founder

The British newspaper The Independent once described Jenő Jandó as “the most prolific recording pianist alive”. Born in Pécs, southern Hungary in 1952, he founded the Naxos record label in 1987 and became the label’s house pianist over the next … Continue reading

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Europe, Performers

Citizen Kane and the Isle of the Dead

A five-note motive in Rahmaninov’s Ostrov mërtvyh (The isle of the dead, op. 29), which evokes the opening of the Dies irae melody used by Berlioz and Liszt, is strikingly similar to what Bernard Herrmann referred to as the motive … Continue reading

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Curiosities, Film music, Visual art

Pauline Viardot’s legacy

Pauline Viardot was one of the most influential women in nineteenth century European classical music. As a singer, her prodigious talent and charisma on the stage inspired dedications, premieres, and roles written specifically for her. Her music salon hosted many … Continue reading

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Filed under Performers, Romantic era

The Siena piano

  A legendary instrument whose sonorities reputedly have no equal anywhere, praised by musicians such as Liszt and Saint-Saëns, the Siena piano is surrounded by an aura of mystery due to its astonishing history. Its soundboard was supposedly made of … Continue reading

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The Smithsonian Institution’s Object of the Day, November 22, 2019: Jenny Lind Concert Program

“Music is prophesy. Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that … Continue reading

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Musicologies nouvelles: Agrégation

Launched by Editions Lugdivine in 2017, Musicologies nouvelles: Agrégation aims to provide a framework for incorporating past achievements in musical analysis into today’s research on the social, cultural, and psychological worlds that surround musical sound. The journal is edited by … Continue reading

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Filed under Analysis, New periodicals, Romantic era