Volume 28, Number 1 · February 5, 1981
The New Liszt
By Robert Craft
The Letters of Franz Liszt to Olga von Meyendorff (1871-1886) Harvard University Press)
translated by William R. Tyler, introduction and notes by Edward N. Waters
Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University (distributed by, 532 pp., $30.00
Liszt's newly published letters to Baroness Olga von Meyendorff are a complete and welcome surprise. Far superior to the composer's other writings, these deserve a place on the much-less-than-five-foot shelf of absorbing correspondence by the great composers. The book alters the received notions of Liszt's character and personality, and wholly reverses the portrait of his later years as drawn in Ernest Newman's anti-hagiography. Mr. Waters surmises that the letters 'must have slipped out of the hands' of the last of the Baroness's four sons in 1933, since they landed on the podium at Sotheby's in April 1934. Newman noted this but presumably did not read the letters, since otherwise he would have been obliged to make substantial revisions in his book, published later the same year.
Review, 2764 words
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