The flamboyant pianist broke strings when he played. By the end of a concert, the corpses of two or three fallen pianos would lie strewn across the stage. On occasion, he would push another onto the stage himself when the others had given up the ghost. Women used the broken strings as bracelets, and there were even some female fans who took Liszt's discarded cigar butts and fashioned them into medallions. When Lisztomania swept through Europe, he was known as the Centaur of the Piano. Yet, Liszt himself was only interested in his music. The Hungarian composer rubbed shoulders with the rulers of Europe, but he was equally at home in gypsy camps. He revelled in decorative swords received from Hungarian noblemen, lived an exuberant social life and performed with medals and insignia hanging from his neck. At the same time, he gave much of his wealth to charity and observed surprisingly puritanical customs. At the age of 36, Liszt stopped giving concerts to focus all his energies on creating the music of the future (what he called Zukunftsmusik). From then on, he took to the stage only as a conductor, before ending his career as an abbé. He never wrote memoirs: “It is sufficient to have lived a life line mine,” he said. This play of biographical sketches introduces the extreme elements of Liszt's life. Liszt swept through the 19th century like a hurricane, from his birthplace in Doborján to Paris, Istanbul and London, from Napoleon III to Pope Pius IX, and, above all, from Beethoven to Debussy. Presented by: Palace of Arts

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