C.J. Farrington

Why has the work of Franz Liszt fallen into such neglect?

Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In 1875, Franz Liszt told a pupil of the kiss of consecration – the Weihekuss – that Beethoven bestowed upon him more than fifty years earlier. After watching the young Hungarian prodigy play works by Ries, Bach and Beethoven himself, he kissed Liszt on the forehead and said: ‘Go! You are one of the fortunate ones! For you will give joy and happiness to many other people.’

Liszt isn’t giving joy to many people these days. Take this year’s BBC Proms, which feature only one piece by Liszt, compared to two by Aaron Copland, four by Dora Pejacevic, and six by Samuel Taylor-Coleridge. Over the past decade, Liszt has appeared in eight Proms, while Rachmaninov has featured in 40. The works featured, too, have done him few favours: the two piano concerti, which are not among his greatest works, account for a third of his scanty presence. 

Things are little better elsewhere. Apart from a handful of works – the concerti, the magisterial Piano Sonata in B Minor, one or two of his symphonic poems (a genre Liszt invented) – he struggles to make it onto concert programmes in almost every setting. Large-scale masterpieces like A Faust Symphony and the oratorio Christus are performed seldom, while recitalists stick to well-trodden repertoire and ignore the riches beyond – waltzes more fascinating than Chopin’s, lieder as haunting as Wolf’s, and character pieces foreshadowing Debussy and Ravel. Classic FM plays a handful of hits like the third Liebestraüme, but ploughing such a narrow furrow merely reinforces the impression that these are the only things worth hearing. 

How did it come to this? How has one of the nineteenth century’s most daring innovators fallen into such neglect? One reason could be old-fashioned snobbery. For Ivan Hewett, writing in the Telegraph recently, we’ve never quite known what to do with Liszt’s extravagant posturing, lurid personal life, and manifold contradictions – ‘half gypsy, half Franciscan monk,’ in Liszt’s own words.

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