Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
Two Piano Transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (S657/R376)

Nevertheless one meets here and there some artists who protest their high esteem for the classical music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – but it is rather like the way that one hears sometimes in other capitals some society women boast of the profundities of German philosophy, of which they take good care not to have a closer knowledge.
- Liszt to Friedrich Wilhelm Constantin, Prince von Hohenzollern-Hechingen. Rome, 26 January 1862

It was with the zeal of a missionary that Franz Liszt championed the music of an earlier generation, and above all that of Beethoven, whose works he included in his concert programmes and on whose behalf he worked over the years for commemorative monuments in Bonn and in Vienna. In a letter of 1865 he condemns in particular the attitudes