Master Concert: Liszt and the Women

Reading concert with Christoph Soldan, piano and moderation, and Maika Witkop, reading. At the age of 23, Franz Liszt met the 31-year-old Countess Marie d'Agoult in the salon of George Sand in Paris. At that time, she was married and had two daughters. They fell in love and decided to live their love together. The first years together followed in Switzerland, where their first daughter Cosima – who would later become Richard Wagner's wife – was born. Two more children, Blandine and Daniel, came into the world before the relationship cooled and eventually ended. Christoph Soldan recounts this first great love in the reading concert and reads the correspondence between Liszt and Marie d'Agoult together with Maike Witkop. Following her, the second life partner in Franz Liszt's life was Princess Caroline of Sayn-Wittgenstein, with whom he lived a reclusive life in Rome for the last 25 years of his life. From his time as a student in Paris to those Roman years, the piano work "années de pèlerinage" runs like a red thread. It is the musical legacy of the genius Franz Liszt, who confesses from the very beginning to being a spiritual person. This great work spans from the early compositions of the 25-year-old virtuoso to the religious works that Abbé Liszt composed in his last years in his apartment at the Villa d'Este near Rome. Liszt was a guest of the Vatican Curial Cardinal Gustav Adolf von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, from whom he also received the so-called minor orders. The sound of church bells runs like a life theme through the total of 26 piano pieces, which together form a compendium of romantic piano music. Christoph Soldan has selected 5 of them and explains the compositions to his audience. A musical journey through 42 years in the life of Franz Liszt from 1835 to 1877: "Sposalizio" after a painting by Raphael (1839), Vallée d'Obermann (1835/1848), au bord d'une source (1835/1848), les jeux d'eaux à la villa d'Este (1877), Angelus, Prayer to the Guardian Angel (1877). Advance ticket sales: Buchhandlung Buchheim in Wertheim, Eichelgasse 11, Phone 09342/1320.