Music-Study in Germany: The Classic Memoir of the Romantic Era

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

222-223

text excerpt

One day this week, when we were with Liszt, he was in such high spirits that it was as if he had suddenly become twenty years younger. A student from the Stuttgardt conservatory played a Liszt Concerto. His name is V., and he is dreadfully nervous. Liszt kept up a little running fire of satire all the time he was playing, but in a good-natured way. I shouldn't have minded it if it had been I. In fact, I think it would have inspired me; but poor V. hardly knew whether he was on his head or on his feet. It was too funny. Everything that Liszt says is so striking. For instance, in one place where V. was playing the melody rather feebly, Liszt suddenly took his seat at the piano and said, "When I play, I always play for the people in the gallery [by the gallery he meant the cock-loft, where the rabble always sit, and where the places cost next to nothing], so that those persons who pay only five groschens for their seat also hear something." Then he began, and I wish you could have heard him! The sound didn't seem to be very loud, but it was penetrating and far-reaching. When he had finished, he raised one hand in the air, and you seemed to see all the people in the gallery drinking in the sound.

excerpt from 'Music-Study in Germany: The Classic Memoir of the Romantic Era' pp. 222-223 (232 words)

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1424815823192