Liszt pupil August Stradal wrote:
‘Many people will ask me how he played in his old age. One can imagine how this titan
of the piano must have played at the height of his brilliance. But it is difficult to describe
how the Master performed at the piano in his later years. First and foremost, it was a
miracle of technique! Liszt, who had ended his virtuoso career in Elisabetgrad (Russia)
in 1847, at the age of 36, and thereafter played only occasionally in public for charity,
even at the time when I got to know him [1885] still commanded that same prodigious
technique which was innate and not learned.
Since the Master never did any technical exercises, devoting himself only to his
compositions and touching the piano only to play something for his pupils and admirers,
it remains an absolute miracle that even in old age Liszt was still the same unsurpassable
virtuoso. I heard many great artists play when they were well advanced in years –
Joachim, Ole Bull, Sarasate, etc. – all of whom were by then capable of only mediocre
achievements technically. Joachim, in particular, played a lot of wrong notes in his later
years.
Nor did Liszt’s playing lose any of its demonic passion, since he could still attack the
keys in the truest sense of the word.’
Unless the rumoured Edison cylinder recording turns up one day, Liszt left no recording
of his playing for posterity.
Pupils
Franz Liszt’s life spanned most of the nineteenth century, the ‘romantic period’ in
musical history, most of it before sound recording. He lived for nine years after Edison’s
invention but, although rumours abound, no cylinder of Liszt’s playing has ever come to
light. It seems he was never approached by Edison’s European emissaries, although
Brahms, Anton Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky were.
In April 1889 Liszt’s pupil Hans von Bülow arrived in Boston and cut a wax cylinder for
Edison, the recording engineer being Edison’s colleague Theodore Wangemann. Bülow
wrote that he recorded ‘Chopin’s last nocturne’ (presumably opus 62 no. 2 in E major).
He wrote: ‘Five minutes later it was replayed to me – so clearly and faithfully that one
cried out in astonishment.’ Wangemann played cylinders by other performers for Bülow
who went into raptures and described Edison’s invention as an ‘acoustic marvel’. He was
not satisfied with his own recording, however, claiming that the presence of the machine
had made him nervous. Wangemann had gone to Boston specifically to record Bülow’s
recitals, and other pieces were probably also recorded. Each cylinder was unique and
could not at that time be replicated and it had been Edison’s intention to buy them up.
No Bülow cylinder has ever turned up but, if it did, it would be extremely valuable
evidence of nineteenth century performing practice.