Every week, I attend piano lessons on Monday night where I sit one-on-one with my teacher and grow my knowledge of famous pianists and the different skills needed to play successfully. While discussing certain methods to improve my pieces and my playing habits, we also converse about legendary players from the past. Last week we talked about Franz Liszt.
Liszt was born in Hungary in the year 1811, making him a part of the Romantic period of music. He was trained in music from a very early age and showed talent in multiple instruments. However his skills in piano would lead him to become one of the greatest pianists who ever lived. Liszt performed his first ever concert in 1823 when he was just 12 years old. He began touring England with his father in 1824 and played multiple private and public concerts. Liszt continued to gain status in the musical world and went on to make several legendary pieces that are still performed today.
One of his most famous pieces, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, composed in 1851, is a demanding and treacherous 20-page work for piano. The first couple of pages seem manageable, but then it moves into a frenzy of jarring chords and melodies. When my piano teacher told me it was one of the hardest piano pieces to play, I did not know what to expect. He pulled up a video of someone playing the entire piece. By the end, my jaw was on the floor. It was genuinely unfathomable how fast the player’s fingers moved in some sections, how complex the structure of the song was, and how the player’s hands were not completely broken by the end. Anyone who can play that piece successfully, or even attempt to play it, has my utmost respect. I am in total awe of Lizst’s ability to create something so laborious yet beautiful. The song demands every piece of effort within you, but the result is unquestionably rewarding. I could possibly play about three measures of this, despite over a decade of piano study, but maybe I will take a crack at it in the near future!
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