Preface
I recently asked someone ‘What is your second favourite piece of Liszt?’” A rueful smile was my only answer. His famous piano sonata in B minor is admired and respected on all sides – loved even, including by those who do not generally warm to his music. Its nearest relation, the Dante sonata, is a tediously repetitive essay in rhetorical overkill. And after that? I look back with disbelief on the days when I used to listen to his first piano concerto, but even that work is surpassed in vulgarity by the second. Elsewhere on this website, I have written about the problem of Shostakovich. But in truth my difficulty with Liszt is far greater, and I am not alone. Many people far more musical than me have blind spots for the composer. Others have private unfavourites which are even more shameful: to my amazement, I once heard Stephen Kovacevich put Haydn into this category. The Catholic Herald always likes a religious angle – not unreasonably – so here it was on the peculiarly unconvincing nature of Liszt’s spiritual music that I concentrated.