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The NY Times ran a wonderful article about the life of Franz Liszt recently in anticipation of his bicentenary next year:

He was, to be sure, an unrivaled performer ("A god for pianists" in Berlioz's words), a man of unusually catholic artistic interests and the 19th century's nearest approach to a Hollywood superstar. But although he is surely significant enough to celebrate, the question whether his music is actually any good has never really gone away.

It probably never will. Liszt, like his music, was constructed of paradoxes, as he well knew. "Half Gypsy, half Franciscan monk," he called himself; another contemporary called him "Mephistopheles disguised as a priest." But if his life was to some extent a touring soap opera played out publicly on various European stages, what the more prudish Mendelssohn described as a "constant oscillation between scandal and apotheosis," it was at least a drama with a sympathetic protagonist. And for all his worldly success, Liszt didn’t have a particularly easy ride.

This picture sure does capture his charismatic presence, doesn't it? Click on it to read the rest of this fascinating story:

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