And while Beatlemania had died down by the late Sixties and appeared, in another generation of women, in the form of the tartan worn by Bay City Rollers fans or the phone hotline set up to deal with the news that Take That were breaking up, Lisztomania had a long tail. “As soon as I reached home, I pulled off my coat, flung myself on the sofa, and wept the bitterest, sweetest tears,” wrote Yuri Arnold, a Russian critic who had temporarily lost his senses. Liszt was, furthermore, a master of self-promotion, augmenting his talent by projecting an almost superhuman image; a musician with mysterious, otherworldly abilities. The film bombed, enjoying just one positive – and prophetic – review from the late Roger Ebert, who called it "a berserk exercise of demented genius” and correctly predicted: “most people will probably despise it”. Welcome to Judgment City: A Look Back at Defending Your Life, The West Wing Returns for an HBO Max Special, Touring Masterworks: Adam Nayman Discusses His New Book on Paul Thomas Anderson. However, all this adulation didn’t make him more respectful to royalty, to whom he could on occasion be downright rude. When Tsar Nicholas I turned up late to a 1840 recital and started talking, Liszt stopped playing and sat motionless with head bowed. This frenzy first occurred in Berlin in 1841 and the term was later coined by Heinrich Heine in a feuilleton he wrote on April 25, 1844, discussing the 1844 Parisian concert season. In 1832, Liszt performed Mendelssohn’s incredibly difficult new piano concerto with brilliance and entirely without error – even though he had never seen the score before. He's already Russellized Debussy, Delius, Strauss, Prokofiev, Bartok, Delerue, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Wagner and Liszt, and, God help us, next he's going to work on George Gershwin. The monster is zapped by Liszt (Roger Daltrey), at the keyboard controls of an ICBM propelled by the groupie-power of his various lovers; In Russell's reading of history, Hitler was a victim of the Ring Cycle and Liszt was the Marshall Plan. 8, review: an admirable divorce album free from recrimination, Meghan and Harry’s Hollywood ‘father figure’: how David Foster became showbiz royalty, From number one to nothing to do: musicians on surviving the pandemic. It is not shy to take sides. Two friends named Stasov and Serov took an adorable vow to keep the day they saw Liszt (8 April 1842) “sacred to us, and we would never forget a single second of it til our dying day.”. When Liszt left Berlin in 1842, King Friedrich Wilhelm gave him a coach pulled by six horses, accompanied by a procession of thirty other carriages and an honour guard of students. Alan Walker, Liszt’s biographer, describes what was probably Liszt’s greatest achievement, completing the transition of the musician from servant to master: “Beethoven, by dint of his unique genius and his uncompromising nature, had forced the Viennese aristocracy to at least regard him as their equal. In action extending from 1811 to 1945, Richard Wagner (Paul Nichols) becomes an unholy combination of Nietzsche's superman, Count Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein - sinking his teeth into Liszt's neck to drain compositions from him, and creating An Aryan monster who dies in the ruins of Berlin with a Hitler mustache and a guitar for machine-gun. To drift onto social media recently is to be confronted by that most naval-gazing of memes: the 2009 vs 2019 “challenge”. He oozed sex appeal and had the kind of aquiline nose and full lips that made for a pretty profile – and Liszt knew it, too. Off-stage, Liszt’s appeal disrupted his private life: he managed to woo the beautiful Countess-cum-author Marie d’Agoult away from her husband and the father of her two daughters and encourage her to embark upon a second life with him in Geneva. And yet "Lisztomania" suggests that his previous film, "Tommy" has been more of an influence on him than most of his previous biographical films, especially the more conventional ones. Lisztomania wasn’t a singularly female pursuit: he possessed something that reduced men to jelly, too. No, this isn't a biography, not even in the sense that Russell ravaged poor Tchaikovsky in "The Music Lovers." Beethoven could perhaps be credited with starting the cult of the musician, but it was not until Paganini appeared on the musical scene in the early decades of the 19th century that a performer achieved celebrity status. A few days later, he played a concert in the city and it was the rapturous response Liszt received here that is considered the beginning of the craze. To argue with Russell's extravaganza on any rational basis is clearly to miss the point. Liszt’s comparisons to a rock star of the Romantic era have long been made, but within that oeuvre it was likely that he was more of a Mick Jagger or Harry Styles than an Ozzy Osbourne. What does all this mean? Liszt was from quite a humble background; his father had been a clerk-musician employed by Prince Esterházy, However, he himself was exceedingly intelligent and well-read, and liked to project a cultivated image, mixing with luminaries of the Paris literary world such as George Sand, Victor Hugo, Heine, Dumas and Balzac. How the classical music industry is defying Covid, Sir Cliff Richard reveals he prayed for his accuser even though he doesn't know who he is, Aurora Orchestra, Kings Place, review: nourishing and radiantly optimistic, Matt Berninger interview: 'Artists want people to understand how complicated they are', Melody Gardot interview: 'God bless sexy women! In 1837, one observer described how “when I first heard him I sat speechless for a quarter of an hour afterwards, in such a stupor of amazement…Such execution…no one else can possess. Upon hearing word of Liszt’s arrival in the city, a group of 30 of them gathered to serenade him with a rendition of Rheinweinlied, one of his songs. Liszt became so famous that he soon had royalty and nobility at his feet. In that art, he is a genius”. What suffering, what misery, what tortures in those four strings!…As for his expression, his manner of phrasing – they are his very soul!” But Liszt’s meteoric rise would eclipse even Paganini’s bright star. Doctors throughout the continent wrote articles about how to immunise against it, such was the fear that women were abandoning “children, kitchen and husband” – according to one article written in celebration of the pianist’s departure – to deal with their infatuation. We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. After doing a midnight flit on erotic dancer Lola Montez, he left a handful of cash with the hotel owners where the pair had spent the evening, warning them that the room would be left in ruins. Upon checking into a hotel in Chamonix in 1836, he listed his profession as “musician-philosopher” and his travel route as “in transit from Doubt to Truth”. Awestruck, Mendelssohn hailed this as a miracle. For 40 years he had an intermittent relationship with the Polish Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein. Users will find a flattering/embarrassing portrait taken 10 years earlier and upload it alongside to a recent snap. It's not even an attack on Hitlerism; the paraphernalia of Nazism is set decoration, just as the Napoleonic wars were in "The Music Lovers." Find out more, The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. The 19th century witnessed the rise of the celebrity musician. When Nicholas inquired why the music did not continue, Liszt said coolly, “Music herself should be silent when Nicholas speaks”. Certainly, Liszt carefully cultivated his image, taking full advantage of new artistic mediums. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Certainly, Liszt carefully cultivated his image, taking full advantage of new artistic mediums. Bach, for instance, was a mere Kapellmeister, and Haydn was not much more than a court servant. Nevertheless, they considered the song's titular subject as “some kind of commercial suicide, since it was talking about a very weird, personal, hermetic subject that few or none care about”. As for “mach schau” – the reaction elicited from Liszt’s audiences could certainly be compared to Beatlemania, although the comparison of course falters when we consider how small Liszt’s influence was in comparison; really it was limited to a small section of the middle and upper classes. But Lisztomania’s revival also offers a ripe opportunity to examine its muse. Lisztomania kicked in as his affair with Marie dwindled into what sounds like a string of fractious summer holidays spent on the German island of Nonnenwerth. As it happened, some of Liszt’s magic rubbed off: the song became Phoenix’s biggest hit to date – even if the lyrics about the fascination with the pianist were cryptic. In 1840 Robert Schumann described Liszt’s extraordinary power of “subjugating, elevating, and leading the public”, noting that audiences were “overwhelmed by a flood of tones and feelings”. Most people will probably despise. Together they had three illegitimate children, one of whom, Cosima, would go on to marry Richard Wagner. Russell is far, far beyond any vestigial concern with logic - and, to tell the truth, I'm starting to like his movies more now that he's frankly running wild. His early depictions are traditional oil portraits, but he soon saw the utility of the lithograph, which could be produced and distributed quickly and cheaply. It was a career move that took a toll on his relationship but introduced Liszt to thousands of pan-continental fans, who whipped themselves into an unprecedented frenzy whenever he rolled back into town. It sent his fans wild. Fascinating! It's a berserk exercise of demented genius, and on that level (I want to make my praise explicit) it functions and sometimes even works. Him on stage in some classical opera house, with women in classical dresses screaming like a 13 year old girl at a Beatles concert. The spider-like Countess lures Liszt's engorged phallus to its last guillotine, the towers of Wagner's castle sport Nazi helmets, Liszt's groupies (including Lola Montez and George Sand) scream hysterically at his concerts and Wagner presides over the Nuremberg Rally as it might have been presented in a Gothic kindergarten. But it’s important to understand that, unlike Beatlemania, the word “mania” truly meant a descent into madness in the 19th century – a sign of both the level of delirium the lustrous-haired pianist could induce and the complete absence of celebrity culture at the time. Russell has taken as his subject his own view of genius, and, with the notable exceptions of "The Devils" and "The Savage Messiah," his geniuses have been composers. As the music critic Ludwig Rellstab put it, “he left not like a king, but as a king”. Before Jimmy Page, there was Liszt. 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