4 June 1853 Mason and other Liszt pupils
15 June 1853 Mason, Brahms, Reményi, Klindworth, Pruckner, Raff and other Liszt
pupils and friends
23 October 1854 Cornelius, Pohl, Lefébure-Wély, and Liszt pupils
21 July 1855 Bülow, Aloys and Carl Tausig, Bronsart and various members of the
Weimar school
May 1861 Charles Gounod
March 1865 Bache and other Liszt pupils (1)
April 1869 Bache and other Liszt pupils (2)
2 April 1877 Richard and Cosima Wagner
We know from the memoirs of Liszt’s young American pupil William Mason (1829-1908)
that he was privileged to hear the composer play his Sonata on three occasions.
The first occasion was on Saturday evening 7 May 1853 at the Altenburg, Weimar, when
the composer played his Sonata and one of his concertos in the presence of Mason, his
fellow pupil Karl Klindworth (1830-1916), violin Ferdinand Laub and the cellist
Bernhard Cossman.
The second occasion was one month later, on Saturday evening 4 June 1853, at the
Altenburg, when Liszt played his ‘Harmonies du Soir’ and his Sonata in the presence of
Mason and others of Liszt’s pupils. Mason noted that he was at his best and played
divinely.’
The third occasion was on Wednesday morning 15 June 1 853, when Liszt played his
Sonata at the Altenburg in the presence of Mason, the twenty year old composer and
pianist Brahms, Edé Reményi, pupils Karl Klindworth and Dionys Pruckner (1834-1896),
composer Joachim Raff and others of Liszt’s pupils and friends.
Brahms and Reményi were on a concert tour at the time and detoured to Weimar so that
Brahms could show some of his early unpublished compositions to the older composer.
What started out as a happy occasion, with Liszt’s brilliant sight-reading of Brahms’s
hardly legible E flat minor Scherzo and part of his C major Sonata, ended quite
uncomfortably for all concerned.
Mason recounted: ‘A little later someone asked Liszt to play his own sonata, a work
which was quite recent at that time, and of which he was very fond. Without hesitation,
he sat down and began playing. As he progressed he came to a very expressive part of
the sonata, which he always imbued with extreme pathos, and in which he looked for the