Run Time: Approx. 23 minutes

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian pianist, composer, and conductor. He was one of several composers born in the five-year period between 1809 and 1813 to achieve significant fame—a group that also included Mendelssohn (1809), Schumann (1810), Chopin (1811), Liszt himself (1811), Wagner (1813), and Verdi (1813). Among his piano teachers was Antonio Salieri, a name that will be recognizable to anyone familiar with the film Amadeus.

A virtuoso pianist, Liszt was one of a rare few musicians and artists to enjoy widespread recognition during their lifetime. Long before there was “Beatlemania,” there was “Lisztomania.” Sir Charles Hallé, another celebrated pianist of the era, described his performance, saying, “Such marvels of executive skill and power [as Liszt’s] I could never have imagined… Chopin carried you with him into a dreamland, in which you would have liked to have dwelled forever. Liszt was all sunshine and dazzling splendor, subjugating his hearers with a power that none could withstand.”

Liszt achieved great fame from a young age, touring extensively and drawing adoring crowds wherever he went. He was one of the first true rock stars in the modern sense of the word—his playing reportedly moved audiences to ecstasy. Fans wore his likeness on their lapels, scrambled for broken piano strings like fly balls at a baseball game, and some even attempted to obtain locks of his hair. Perhaps modern audiences can take comfort in knowing that this kind of fan behavior has been around for centuries.

The second piano concerto was written during the height of Liszt’s concertizing career. While in manuscript, he referred to the work as Concerto symphonique, a term often used for solo-instrument works where the orchestra is included as a more equal partner, rather than acting as backup band.

This concerto is also unique in its form—it breaks from the standard musical structures expected of Classical and Romantic-era concertos and instead unfolds as one continuous work without clearly delineated movements. You might find yourself in the second movement without realizing it or knowing exactly when the transition occurred. This lack of rigid structure gives the piece an improvisatory feel, as it progresses episodically from scene to scene like a narrative story.

Another fascinating element of the work is Liszt’s harmonic language—the chords he chooses and the order in which he deploys them. There’s an unexpected quality to the way he changes keys. In most music, orchestral or otherwise, it’s easy to guess what the next chord will be—Western tonality is designed precisely to set up expectations that lead to a satisfying conclusion, much like correctly guessing the punchline of a joke. There’s even a name for a musical phrase that ends contrary to expectation: the deceptive cadence. But Liszt leaps from key to key so rapidly—staying in one just long enough to transition to the next—that we can no longer guess where he might go next. How, then, in this labyrinth of key centers, can we possibly stay grounded? The answer lies in the unifying theme introduced at the very beginning of the piece, which returns in various forms throughout the work, like a beacon in the night.

In some sense, Liszt achieves with this work what a great stand-up comedian does: he continually subverts expectations, never resolving a phrase as expected, and in doing so, undermines the ability to form expectations at all. Yet, through constant callbacks, he creates a thread of connection throughout the music that ferries the listener along. All the material is related, and one can feel this even if not conscientiously aware of it. All this while serving up some of the most virtuosic piano writing in the repertoire.

This artistic audacity made Liszt something of a revolutionary. Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick famously referred to him, along with contemporaries Berlioz and Wagner, as one of the “most offensive and lunatic” composers of all time. But if there’s one thing music history teaches us, it’s that the “offensive lunatics” are often the very figures who usher in the most revolutionary innovations. Without Liszt, we couldn’t have had composers like Mahler, Strauss, or Stravinsky.  And we could not have had Liszt without first having Beethoven.