An Irishman's Diary

"For my part, I leave it with all the honours of warfare." With these words did the legendary Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt comment on a financially ruinous concert tour of Ireland and Britain in the foul winter of 1840-1. Accustomed to triumph as the great man was, this was a damning appraisal of a gruelling tour which covered some 3,400 miles in four months and which lost over £1,000 - a very hefty sum in those days.

In sharp contrast to his reception in concert salons all over Europe and Asia Minor, where Liszt was feted as the greatest pianist alive, the inglorious Irish leg of the tour was marked only by bad planning, difficult weather, a largely indifferent public and general ill-luck.

The 29-year-old genius might have expected better in the land of John Field, whose music he championed, but it was not to be. The opening performance, a rowdy affair at the Rotunda in Dublin two days before Christmas, was a portent of trouble to come. As was the custom when a figure such as Liszt performed, the audience was asked for written themes which, in a show of mastery, were to be played on sight by the virtuoso and then improvised. Only one such theme was produced, however, which left poor Liszt short of music for the rest of the night. A Mr Pigott gave him a piece titled "The Russian Hymn", which he duly played but in the words of John Orlando Parry, a composer and member of Liszt's party, "this was not enough".

Banter with audience

According to Parry's account, which is detailed in a meticulous and lucid 1982 biography by Alan Walker, Franz Liszt - The Virtuoso Years 1811-1847 (Faber & Faber,£14.95 in UK), he killed time by bantering with the audience. He then played no less than 12 versions of a waltz written by Parry, who tells us that they were well-received, despite the copious repetition. It was hardly the stuff of the man's reputation, however.

Worse was to come at Clonmel, where Liszt, who had travelled on bad roads through a cold night from Cork, discovered that the concert had been forgotten altogether. The pianist insisted, though, that the entire programme be given in his hotel sitting room. An audience of only 25 was gathered and they heard the small upright piano rattle and shake under the weight of his forceful playing. `'Twas like a private matinee", wrote Parry in his diary. Of the frail piano, he wrote that it was "funny to see Liszt firing away . . . on this little instrument, but it stood his powerful hand capitally".

The tour took a strange route. From Dublin, Liszt and his band of intrepid followers had gone to Cork and then to Clonmel. Limerick was next, though instead of going there directly, the party first returned to Dublin. In keeping with the atmosphere of all-round misfortune, the night-time journey to the capital was hampered by a blizzard. Walker writes that Liszt sat outside the crowded coach in the driving snow and resembled a snowman on arrival.

Meanwhile, the Limerick Standard had reported that a "Grand Concert" by "M. List" would take place on December 29th. Eleven days late, Liszt finally appeared at seven on the morning of January 9th - the concert took place that very lunch-time. "A poor, dirty place", Parry wrote. "There were about 100 people present, not more. These were almost more than had been expected, for the concert had been much postponed." Liszt was encored once. "He must have been off-form - which was hardly a shock - for Parry, who played harp as an opening act, was encored twice.

Contractual obligations

Further concerts were held in Kilkenny, Donaghadee and Belfast before Liszt left Ireland in late January for his concluding performances in Glasgow and Edinburgh. At the outset of the tour, he had been engaged by one Louis Lavenu, a musician-entrepreneur in London, to perform in the market towns of the north of England, Ireland and Scotland for a fee of 500 guineas a month. Such were Lavenu's losses, however, that Liszt agreed to discharge "the poor devil" from all his contractual obligations. It was a generous, though not uncharacteristic, end to what was, all in all, a most uphappy business. No surprise then, that Liszt, in a letter to his lover Marie d'Agoult, the future novelist Daniel Stern, would describe the experience as something akin to warfare. In Britain too, as here, the mishaps had been constant - boats were delayed, concerts missed, Liszt had to have a tooth removed and at one point he had even injured his left hand, a perilous thing for a pianist.

On all counts, it was a long way off Liszt's sensational displays of unmatched virtuosity in cities as far apart as Lisbon, St Petersburg and Constantinople and in almost every town of note in between. Such was the impression he created in over a thousand public performances between 1838 and 1847 that the period became known as his "years of transcendental execution".

Piano-shaped biscuits

Liszt was revered by ordinary folk, his concerts selling out weeks in advance, and courted by royalty. In 1838 in Vienna, for example, where music was admittedly prominent in the life of the city, the pianist was applauded in his hotel by total strangers while confectioners on the streets sold piano-shaped biscuits iced with the word "Liszt". Walker even tells us that a doctor treating him for a cold was inundated with new patients requesting not medical care, but news of their hero.

Of the sluggish reaction to Liszt's concerts here, a plausible explanation could be that word of his genius had been slow to reach Ireland. It is a tribute to the man's resilience, however, that he stuck to his programme to the end, despite the setbacks. A lesser man would have left for home after Clonmel, or taken to drink, but Liszt didn't. It was this spirit which saw him through years of further travels. When he retired as a performer in 1847 at the age of 35, Liszt had astounded audiences in Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Turkey, Romania, Poland and Britain, amongst others.

At least we can say that he came here too, although someone should have warned the man that January, then as now, is more a hardy than a fair month.