Sep
3rd
Wed
3rd
Piano recitals were, by modern standards, completely nuts. Hamilton, in his deft, sympathetic account of the old-school virtuosos and their gaudy habits, devotes several amusing pages to the antics of the great Franz Liszt, who was the first pianist to break from the miscellany format and give concerts on his own, although the ensuing spectacle resembled “The Ed Sullivan Show” more than the hushed recital of today. In one favorite routine, Liszt brought onstage a large urn into which his listeners had dropped slips of paper, each one inscribed with a suggestion for a tune on which he might improvise. He then drew out the messages one by one, taking delight in those which wandered off topic. Hamilton writes, “On turning out the urn in a concert on March 15, 1838 in Milan, Liszt found a piece of paper with the question ‘Is it better to marry or remain single?’—to which he slickly replied, ‘Whatever course one chooses, one is sure to regret it.’ Written on another scrap he found the words ‘the railroad’—which he illustrated on the keyboard with a swath of glissandi.
