Christopher O'Riley

Christopher O'Riley: O’Riley’s Lizst

by C. Michael Bailey
May 3, 2013

Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt (1811-86) made a career as the consummate concert showoff. He fully learned to be a showoff from fiddler Nicolo Paganini (1782--1840), who, with Liszt, championed the idea of the “Artist as Hero." Previously, it had not been so fashionable for an artist to outshine the composer whose music he or she was playing. With Paganini, this was easy: he composed music that no one else could play and played it with a flair of ...