Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Complete Piano Music, Volume 4

Then came the thing I had longed for — Liszt's playing. I sat near him so that I could see both his hands and his face. For the first time in my life I beheld real inspiration — for the first time I heard the true tones of the piano. He played one of his own compositions — one of a series of religious fantasies. His manipulation of the instrument was quiet and easy, and his face was simply grand — the ups compressed and the head thrown backward. When the music expressed quiet rapture or devotion a smile flitted over his features; when it was triumphant the nostrils dilated.
— George Eliot, Journal, 1854

The story of the child prodigy who flashes like a meteor across the musical world, to burn itself out or vanish into oblivion after a brief interval, is an all-too-familiar tale. But the story of the child prodigy who bursts upon the musical world in a dynamic exp