It is with extreme diffidence that I attempt to record my impressions of the pianoforte-playing of the greatest and most lavishly-gifted performer [Franz Liszt] upon that instrument whose executant feats have heretofore come under my personal cognizance...The Canon of Albano was an elderly man when I heard him play most firequently during the Ecumenical winter in Rome, between sixteen and seventeen years ago, and later on lost the inimitable force and flexibility which then characterised his execution ; but at that time his normal powers were unimpaired (at least, so I was assured by musicians who had heard him in his prime), and the miracles he worked upon the clavichord were at once so astounding and so beautiful that, by comparison with them, all I had thitherto experienced in the way of accomplished pianism appeared to me as naught.