Memorial Year of Ferenc Liszt 2011

Memorial Year of Ferenc Liszt
2011
Presented by the
Consulate General of the Republic of Hungary
in Los Angeles
Edited by:
LISZT-EVENTS IN LOS ANGELES, DURING THE
HUNGARIAN PRESIDENCY OF THE COUNCIL OF THE
EUROPEAN UNION
February 27. 5.00pm – Opening of the Franz Liszt Year – 200 years
since his birth – Piano Concert of Mr Péter Tóth, Winner of the 2010
International Liszt Piano Competition – United Hungarian House –
1975 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018
February 27, 5.00pm – The Life of Franz Liszt – Exhibition - United
Hungarian House – 1975 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018
March 5, 7.00pm –Franz Liszt Year – 200 years since his birth – Gala
Benefit Recital by Mr. Péter Tóth, Winner of the 2010 International
Piano Competition – SPF Gallery – 8609 Washington Blvd, Culver
City, Inf: 310-395-6330
March 12, 7.30 – Franz Liszt Year – 200 years since his birth – The
Santa Monica Symphony presents Liszt – Allen Robert Gross, Music
Director and Conductor - Santa Monica Civic Auditorium – 1855
Main Street, Santa Monica
April 7, 7.00pm – Jacaranda Music Society/ Franz Liszt Year – 200
years since his birth – Paula Rasmussens: Liszt-songs – First Presbyterian Church – Santa Monica
MEMORIAL YEAR OF FERENC (FRANZ) LISZT
2011 is an important anniversary year for the world of music. It is 200 years
since the birth and 125 years since the death of the 19th century`s great humanist artist, the most outstanding pianist and one of the most influential
composers of epoch-making significance who is at the same time one of the
greatest figures of the Hungarian culture: Ferenc (Franz) Liszt.
It is an excellent coincidence that in the anniversary year, in the first half of
2011, Hungary holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union.
UNESCO has included the double Liszt anniversary in 2011 among its priority anniversary programs paying tribute to the world‟s most outstanding
figures.
Hungary is proud of her son, Ferenc Liszt, whose professional career happily
strengthened the world-wide fame of the Hungarian music. A memorial year
always contributes to keeping the memory of great persons alive. The memory and the legacy of Ferenc Liszt is unforgettable. Every year we have a memorial year, every time we listen to the music of Liszt, we listen to something
unique. The Consulate General of Hungary in Los Angeles pays tribute to
this wonderful artist. With a modest try we offer some musical programs in
memory of the great Ferenc Liszt…
Ambassador Balázs Bokor
Consul General of Hungary in Los Angeles
LISZT, OUR CONTEMPORARY
The crises of values that are sometimes the inevitable concomitants of changes in our
world often first affect the spirits that have the most direct influence. Despite the fact
that for many he is the symbol of artistic freedom, there are still quite a few who do not
acknowledge, or belittle the enormous significance of Franz Liszt in the history of music, or even try to deny it. It is impossible here to set out the reasons for this. One thing
is certain: Liszt‟s music is always a challenge for musicians, above all forcing them to
adopt a position. To be equal to this challenge: this is in effect the story of music in the
second half of the 19thcentury and the first half of the 20th, which is in itself remarkable. But the art of Franz Liszt is far more than that. Everywhere, from his tiniest little
sketches to his major works, we find the unmistakable, immediately recognizable individual voice that is the mark of the greatest creative artists. However many periods we
divide his work into, each of them is characterized by this attitude that can only come
from a wholly sovereign artistic position. That a considerable part of this gigantic body
of work popularizes not his own ideas but the activity of other musicians is only icing
on the cake, an irrefutable argument against the efforts of those who from time to time
try to besmirch Liszt‟s character and work. None of his fellow musicians could boast of
a comparable aesthetic vision, tolerance or empathy. Whether he used his own musical
ideas or those of others, he always does so on a grand scale, with style, refined taste
and an al fresco attitude in the noblest sense.
LISZT, THE MUSIC PEDAGOGUE
Franz Liszt, who himself, studied among others, with Carl Czerny a student of Beethoven and with the elderly Antonio Salieri, began his activity as a piano teacher
while still very young. As the virtuoso left behind the child prodigy stage he earned a
living by giving piano lessons and the first great love of his life is also connected to
this activity: in 1828 while still a teenager Liszt fell in love with one of his students of
aristocratic birth. The beautiful but also adolescent Caroline de Saint-Cricq reciprocated the young man‟s feelings, but her father the count put an end to the budding
affair as well as to the piano lessons that transgressed social barriers.
Quite a number of young female students in love with the great musician later appeared around Liszt whose master courses given in Weimar in the 1850s began to
take clearer shape. The cautious formulation is justified because the music-making
and lively conversation in the friendly company that gathered around Liszt on Sunday afternoons (where the excellent pianist and conductor, Hans von Bülow who later
became his son-in-law also played a modest part) only gradually became a specifically pedagogical gathering. But the courses in Weimar, and those held later in other
cities, retained their social character throughout: Liszt acted simultaneously as informal teacher and genial host, and it was not unusual for the teaching to be accompanied by a game of cards and drinks. It is characteristic of the informality of the teaching that the lessons were occasionally given in restaurants, and summer excursions
with an even more relaxed atmosphere did no harm to Liszt‟s prestige either.
Those who wish to see and present Liszt merely in the context of the history of the
development of music are greatly mistaken. It is true that without Liszt‟s work the
generation that followed him, studded with names that still shine brightly, would have
been very different and perhaps even the present state of music would be different. In
this sense he is our constant contemporary, but this is not the sole reason for the importance of his achievements. The great innovator, the unquestionable artist of form,
seemingly out to provoke, in reality is no stranger to equilibrium. It is clear from his
works that the composer often accused by contemporary critics as being an empty
virtuoso, is immeasurably more than that: he is a true poet. And if we add that all this
can be said of our compatriot, who manifested his Hungarian identity not in mere
poses but in actions of inestimable value taken for the advancement of music in Hungary, besides feeling a quiet sense of pride we must perform his compositions as often
and as authentically as possible in tribute to his defining contribution to universal cultural history, or – in the words of Béla Bartók – to the greatness of the creative power of
Franz Liszt.
In view of this method it may appear paradoxical that the greatest and still internationally significant result of the music pedagogical activity of Liszt, who was such an
informal teacher, is a serious institution, the Budapest Academy of Music. He worked
together with Erkel for the foundation of the Academy of Music, and after he was
appointed in 1875 president of the institution. And when in 1879 the academy finally
moved into the neo-Renaissance palace on Andrássy út, Liszt moved together with
the institution and right up to the year of his death continued his piano master school
here in what is now the building of the Franz Liszt Memorial Museum and Research
Centre. “My best hours are when I am teaching in the new academy of music,” he
wrote in a letter, and his courses that were still held in the same relaxed, paternal
atmosphere attracted to Pest students from all over the world following in the footsteps of Liszt. He did not give piano lessons in the traditional sense in Pest either, he
did not teach fingerings, and as he listened to his students‟ playing, the virtuoso who
was deservedly celebrated in old age too was far more interested in the spirit of the
performance than in the mere technique. “What does he care for the precision of the
performance if there is life in it! […] away with hidebound schoolmastery!” was how
Eugène d‟Albert, perhaps his most outstanding late student, now known mainly as an
opera composer, described his master‟s teaching manner.
Zoltán Kocsis
General Music Director
Hungarian National Philharmonic
“Today‟s youth are so spoiled that they now play my works from memory,” in the
witty, self-deprecating remark made by the elderly Liszt who not only nurtured and
encouraged the talented youth he discovered at his lessons but also effectively supported their careers, at times making considerable sacrifices. These students included
his future successor at the Academy of Music: the excellent István Thomán who later
taught Béla Bartók and Ernő Dohnányi. And if we take into account the chain of
teachers through the generations we find that Liszt‟s activity as a music teacher is still
just as much a living memory in Hungarian music training and our entire music life
as his most popular compositions.
LISZT, THE CHRISTIAN THINKER
“You belong to art, not the church,” Ádám Liszt admonished his son, when the 15-year
-old Franz Liszt, tired of his role as the celebrated “artistic-household pet” of the salons, began to show increasing interest in religious literature and even in the priesthood as a career. Paternal authority won the day, but Liszt always devoted part of his
attention, even in his stormiest years as a virtuoso, to the eternal questions of faith as
well as to current questions of the church and church music. He admired the Abbé
Lamennais, the liberal Catholic thinker who linked Christian ideals with political democracy and the struggle against social oppression; he gave his name to the boldly anti
-clerical articles written by his lover Marie d‟Agoult, and already in 1845 spoke with
sarcastic indignation against the disillusioning effect of profane music heard during
church ceremonies. Right up until his death the secular melodies played in Catholic
churches aroused his anger, as his grandson Siegfried Wagner recalled in the following
passage of his memoirs: “In Venice on a big feast of Mary he took me with him to
church... The high mass began, when gallops and polkas were heard from the organ, as
was the custom at that time in Italy. During the transubstantiation of the bread and
wine we heard the lovely song: „I long to kiss your black eyes.‟ I noticed how restless
my grandfather became... the ceremony had barely finished when he seized my hand
and hurried out of the church with me. Not far from the finely ornamented doors the
naïve organist rushed up to him and asked how he liked the music. Liszt replied:
“Know the truth: it was rubbish and filth.”
In his old age Liszt regularly appeared in public in a priestly robe, as he had taken
minor church orders in April 1865 and so became a cleric: “I entered the church order –
but certainly not out of any disdain for the world, or even less because I had grown
weary of art… My attraction to Catholicism has been present from my childhood and
has now become a constant and predominant sentiment.” Because although he had
originally travelled to Rome to obtain papal permission for his marriage to Princess
Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, after the failure of the attempt Liszt felt an increasingly
strong urge to become a man of the church and– as the innovator of Catholic church
music – to become a veritable “new Palestrina”. Pope Pius IX, who received Liszt at a
private audience, encouraged both aspirations but the universal Catholic church was
passing through a serious crisis as the ecclesiastical state came into conflict with the
process of Italian unification and had very little energy left for the reform of church
music.
Nevertheless, over the years Liszt composed a host of works arousing religious devotion: piano pieces and masses (such as the Coronation Mass written for the coronation
of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth), organ pieces and church choral works, psalms and
oratorios – among them the monumental Christus oratorio written between 1855 and
1867. Both before and after his years in Rome, as already in the 1850s Liszt could confidently write the following lines to the Grand Duke of Weimar: “It is a fact and I believe
I can say with good conscience and despite my modesty, that not one of the composers
known to me approaches church music with such intensive and deep emotions.”
LISZT, THE CELEBRATED WORLD STAR
Although there were a surprising number of internationally recognized artists even
celebrated throughout Europe before the 19thcentury, the appearance of the first stars
in the modern sense can in all likelihood be linked to Romanticism, to the cult of the
personality that flourished at that time, to civil openness and the rise of the press.
Child prodigies or instrumental virtuosi quickly acquired a fame that spread beyond
the borders of their own country, and Franz Liszt was not only one of the most stormily celebrated and admired of these musical stars, but was also the artist with the longest career who lived and created in the spotlight of attention throughout his long life.
From the young adolescent prodigy pianist of Parisian salons, he became a representative figure perfectly meeting the requirements of the age. Because, although the blonde
hair that later became snow white, the flamboyant appearance and the retinue of lovelorn female admirers that Liszt attracted even in old age were all part of the artist‟s
trademark, his collegial spirit and sense of responsibility, his sense of artistic mission
fully justified the impression made by his outward appearance.
“Did you see Liszt? He is still the same old boy, even more handsome than ever! What
power! What emotions! What enchanting charm, what generosity!” – wrote one of his
followers in the 1860s, when he was already well beyond his virtuoso years, and we
find all of Liszt‟s attractive qualities in this enthusiastic outburst. Not only the charm
but also the generosity, for it would be hard to find another musician in the history of
music more selfless and ready to help than Liszt. On countless occasions he placed his
popularity in the service of his fellow musicians. Liszt, who was at first incomparably
better known and acclaimed than Richard Wagner, not only conducted the compositions of his future son-in-law, but also disseminated the art of his brilliant colleague
through a whole series of piano transcriptions.
Liszt, who retained his reputation and international prestige far beyond the heroic
period of Romanticism, remained in the spotlight of attention practically up to the
moment of his death, and the city of Pest and the young Academy of Music, as well as
Weimar and even Bayreuth could benefit from the interest shown in his person. “His
arrival was always a celebration for Budapest,” wrote a memoirist, but the elderly Liszt
was also feted and given a princely reception elsewhere: in 1872, on the 50thanniversary
of his career his admirers organized a three-day celebration for him in our capital and
on his 70thbirthday he was greeted with a whole series of concerts in Rome. In the year
of his death, on his last concert tour, Queen Victoria received him in Windsor Castle so
that she could delight in the playing of the elderly master.
Liszt, the celebrity received many honors in his life, while today statues and public
spaces throughout Europe preserve his memory. And not only in Europe, indeed not
only on our planet: the name of the bright star of the 19 thcentury is preserved in a crater on Mercury and a small planet rotating on a course in the zone between Mars and
Jupiter has been named: 3910 Liszt.
In the Liszt Year celebrating the bicentennial of the composer‟s birth a whole series of
events in Hungary and abroad will evoke the still living memory of the musician who
impressed the whole of 19thcentury Europe. The varied programmes are grouped
around characteristic aspects of the imposing figure and artistic activity of Franz Liszt.
They will present the man who cultivated his Hungarian identity but was at home
everywhere as a cultivated citizen of the world, the religious artist who planned the
renewal of Catholic church music, the piano virtuoso celebrated throughout the
world, the music teacher whose influence is still felt through his establishment of the
Academy of Music and his students, and last but not least the great star with his
crowds of fans and souvenir hunters.
LISZT, THE PIANO VIRTUOSO
“It is impossible to describe in words the way Liszt handles the piano; when he puts
his hands on that many-toothed monster it ceases to be a piano; it becomes a kind of
living wonder that threatens with its voice, as though the monster of the Apocalypse
were roaring down at us; then the monster retreats and it begins to speak softly about
the deep secrets of the heart for which there are no words; it captures the moonbeams
and the starry summers, bringing the whole heavens closer to us.” It was with these
enthusiastic, perhaps not very expert but all the more sensitive words that the novelist
Mór Jókai wrote of the elderly Franz Liszt‟s piano playing. For throughout his long
career Liszt was a grand fascinateur of the piano, and already on the occasion of his first
appearance in Pest in 1823 similar reports were written about the virtuosity of the
“handsome blonde youth”: “he showed such skill, lightness, precision, pleasant force
and mastery of the keyboard that the entire noble assembly was filled with delight and
admiration.”
Liszt then further perfected his playing in Paris, because although he was not admitted
as a student to the prestigious Conservatoire, the French capital often described around
that time as Pianopolis nevertheless offered the young musician exceptional opportunities for development. Paris not only had an abundance of music teachers and master
pianists, there were also numerous factories perfecting and mass producing the instrument. One of these, the respected Érard company soon became Liszt‟s supporter. And
the pianist who, right from the start devoted special attention to a refined appearance,
soon found an admiring audience in the salons of aristocratic and banking families.
Rivalry too, early became a part of Liszt‟s life in Paris, a city blessed with so many
excellent pianists. The inspiring friendship of Frédéric Chopin can be mentioned as
evidence of this, as well as the famous musical duel held in the salon of Princess Belgiojoso between Liszt and the now long forgotten Sigismund Thalberg. But the instrumental virtuoso who most spurred Liszt to self-examination and competition was not a
pianist but a violinist: Niccolò Paganini, the Devil‟s violinist. His influence can be felt
not only in Liszt‟s entire podium persona or his piano playing, but also in his work as a
composer. From this point on the brilliance of his piano pieces sought ever newer effects, pushing the limits of instrumental playing and at the same time of performance
arising from the soul of the instrument. And because he composed these pieces for
himself, their perfect and inspired performance continues to be a challenge for successive generations – to compete with each other and meet the standard set by the virtuoso and composer, as we will no doubt see for ourselves at the International Piano
Competition in the bicentennial year.
On his triumphant concert tours the young Liszt made his talent as a pianist known
throughout Europe – from London to St Petersburg, and of course to Pest-Buda.
“Renowned musician – freeman of the world” – wrote Mihály Vörösmarty in the first
line of his poem in tribute to Liszt. And although as he left his youthful years behind
Liszt made considerably fewer appearances as a concert pianist, he retained his manual
agility, brilliant technique and his stage charisma, so that even the elderly master fully
deserved the joking tribute paid to him in the caption given to a Liszt caricature published in a Hungarian satirical magazine: “Fortissimus pianista, Claviator maximus.”
LISZT, THE HUNGARIAN CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
“He arrived from Russia in his Offenbach travelling carriage, regarded as a novelty,
and of which he had two… These carriages were greatly admired. Provided with every
luxury, every amazing comfort, they served as a salon and dining-room by day and a
bedroom by night.” We can read in Liszt‟s contemporary biography about the mobile
accommodation used by the artist who criss-crossed Europe many times in the course
of his career, which was well suited to the citizen of the world at home almost everywhere, and to the lifestyle of this wandering romantic. Liszt did, in fact, feel at home in
many different regions of the continent, travelling between the countries, kingdoms
and principalities of a Europe that in many respects was even more diverse than it is
today. The performing virtuoso delighted in this colorful variety, the striking features
and sound characteristics of the national cultures; the attentive and sensitive composer
understood and made use of them. As a result the beloved melodies of a whole host of
nations can be heard in his piano pieces: old Hussite songs and Neapolitan canzone,
Spanish rondo and festive polonaise, God Save the Queen, and naturally a whole series
of Hungarian songs and rhapsodies.
As a young man Liszt became a true citizen of the world in the liberal atmosphere of
Parisian artistic society, and later as the musical leader of the principality of Weimer he
staunchly preserved his European outlook and his grandly confident ease of manner,
just as later as resident of the “eternal city”, or as a piano professor in Budapest. His
was a truly international career: he wrote a French opera (Don Sanche, composed when
he was still in his early teens), he established a German music society and a Hungarian
academy of music, and like the many concert venues and awards, Liszt‟s generous
charity knew no borders – from Hamburg to Paris, from Bonn to Budapest. It would
appear that the great man‟s love life also demonstrated his ability to transcend linguistic and ethnic (as well as social) differences, but his international host of students was
at least as convincing evidence of his constant openness and lack of prejudice. Perhaps
the most eloquent proof of this openness was Liszt‟s activity in Weimar: in the city that
had almost entirely lost its color after the death of Goethe he had the works of the most
progressive German composers of the time performed, as well as compositions by
Berlioz and Verdi, and even in 1877, well after his official departure, he used his prestige to have the world première of Camille Saint-Saëns‟s opera, the still popular Samson and Delila, held in Weimar.
“And yet our kinsman everywhere you go!” reads the second line of Vörösmarty‟s Ode
to Liszt already cited above, and the musician‟s entire long life bore witness to the
soundness of the poet‟s trust. Because although this son of Doborján never became
proficient in the Hungarian language, Franz Liszt never forgot his national allegiance
and patriotic duty. “It is my lodestar that one day Hungary will be able to point to me
with pride,” he once wrote, while in another letter he summed up his active patriotism
eager to be of use: “The essential thing for me can be summed up thus: as I was born in
Hungary it is fitting that they should benefit here, however slightly, from my musical
talent. Rather than flaunting my patriotism with empty phrases, I am striving to accomplish the tasks that go with it.”