The fifth occasion was on 21 July 1855 at a soirée at the Altenburg, when Carl Tausig
(1841-1871), fourteen year old prodigy, Liszt’s most brilliant pupil and dedicatee of his
1860 ‘Mephisto’ Waltz, played some pieces. He and his father, Aloys, a respected piano
piano teacher, were presented to Hans von Bülow and various members of the Weimar
school. Bülow played three of his own works and Liszt concluded by playing his
Scherzo and his Sonata. Afterwards everyone went down to the Erbprinz Hotel for
dinner. Liszt’s brilliant young pupil, pianist and composer, Hans von Bronsart (1830-
1913) heard Liszt play his Sonata at the Altenburg in July 1855, presumably this
performance of 21 July 1855, and wrote in the ‘Neue Zeitscrift für Musik’: ‘In regard to
its self stipulated form and development, this is one of the singular events of modern
times, as if it were a continuation of Beethoven’s late period sonatas, a work to consider
as new beginning for the Sonata.’
The sixth occasion was on, or shortly before, 27 May 1861. Liszt’s daughter Blandine
wrote to Liszt’s companion Carolyne von Sayne-Wittgenstein on 27 May 1861 from
Paris about French composer Charles Gounod: ‘Gounod is very friendly and enthusiastic
about my father’s music. He played him his Sonata dedicated to Robert Schumann and
Liszt’s ‘Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude.’ (Saffle and Deaville, page 113) Liszt
was in Paris from 10 May to 8 June 1861. It was his first visit to Paris in more than seven
years. ‘At the home of the Metternichs Liszt dined with Gounod, who had brought alomg
with him the score of his latest opera, Faust, a work which was already the talk of the
town. Liszt wrote: “I presented him with his waltz for dessert – to the great
entertainment of those listening” ’ (Walker, page 539)
The seventh occasion was in March 1865 when Liszt played his Sonata in Rome for a
group of pupils including the twenty-three year old Liszt pupil Walter Bache (1842-1888).
Bache was with Liszt for seventeen summers in Rome and back home in England
performed and enthusiastically promoted Liszt’s works including the Sonata.
The eighth occasion was in April 1869 when it seems that Liszt played his Sonata for a
group of pupils, including Bache, in the Boesendorfer salon in Vienna.
The ninth occasion was during the evening of 2 April 1877 when Liszt, then sixty-seven
years of age, played his Sonata at the home of the Wagners in Bayreuth. Liszt stayed
with them from 24 March to 3 April 1877 and they celebrated Wagner’s name-day on 2
April when Wagner gave Liszt a signed copy of his newly published autobiography
‘Mein Leben’. In the afternoon Wagner sang the first Act of ‘Parsifal’ with Liszt
accompanying him on the piano and in the evening Liszt performed his Sonata. Cosima
(who was Liszt’s daughter, Wagner’s wife and Bülow’s former wife) wrote in her diary
of a ‘lovely cherished day, on which I can thank heaven for the comforting feeling that
nothing – no deeply tragic parting of the ways, no malice on the part of others, no
differences in channels – could ever separate us three.’ ‘Oh, if it were possible to add a
fourth [Bülow] to our numbers here! But that an inescapable fate forbids, and for me
every joy and exaltation ends with an anxious cry to my inner being!’