Mephisto Waltz

Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Berlioz, Rossini, Wagner, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Rubinstein. These musical greats were Franz Liszt’s contemporaries and friends during his long, tempestuous, and productive life—a life lived during one of the richest periods in all musical history.

Born in Austria-Hungary, Liszt learned to play the piano at an early age; he was then taken to Vienna to study under the great teacher, Czerny, Beethoven’s own pupil. Before he was fourteen, Liszt played concerts and recitals in Paris and London. Whilst still on the threshold of his fabulous career, Liszt felt dissatisfaction with his worldly life and seriously considered entering the priesthood. But this man, a failure when he lived a conventional life and successful only when wildly extravagant, became instead the leader in the fashionable musical world of Pairs—and eventually of all Europe. It was only in old age that he returned to the spiritual and became the Abbé Liszt.