Barenboim plays Liszt (Wanderjahre Schweiz)

31 July is the anniversary of Franz Liszt's death. A series of programmes produced by Bavarian Television with Daniel Barenboim sheds light on the much wrinkled activity of the piano virtuoso, composer, music teacher and theorist, conductor and artistic director Franz Liszt. His significance in music history lies on the one hand in his efforts to renew and develop practical musical life. His tireless advocacy of contemporary music is as much a part of this as his epoch-making influence as a piano virtuoso, as a music teacher - Liszt had about 400 pupils as court conductor in Weimar, including Eugen d'Albert, Alexander Borodin, Friedrich Smetana, Arthur Nikisch - and as opera director at the Weimar court from 1847 to 1861. On the other hand, Liszt's significance lies in compositional innovations of far-reaching influence. With the ANNEES DE PELERINAGE, Liszt created for the first time a kind of literary cycle whose parts can be performed not only as a whole and in the sequence prescribed by the composer, but also individually. This makes the form of the cycle in the narrower sense.

The first book of the ANNEES DE PELERINAGE of 1855, entitled PREMIERE, ANNEE: SUISSE, goes back to ALBUM D'UN VOYAGEUR, written on the occasion of a journey through Switzerland in 1835/36 with his life in danger in Grafin d'Agoult: "I had a secret longing to be captivated by one of those powerful impressions that natural beauties make on me".