Chapter 1 - Master Liszt in London, 1824

Summary

SYNOPSIS

My research into the activities of Liszt and his associates during his first stay in London began in 1997 after reading an article entitled “Master Liszt in London in 1824” by organologist Alain Roudier, published in the Spring 1997 edition of Harpa-Piano, a rather obscure Swiss periodical. This brief piece included a facsimile of an unpublished letter from harp and piano agent Pierre Érard to his uncle in Paris concerning a performance given by Liszt in 1824 in the presence of royal princesses Sophia and Augusta in London. This find led me to identify what may be the sole extant copy of Czerny's Grand Polonaise in B-flat Major, Op. 18, held in the University of Cambridge Library, as almost certainly the work that Liszt played on the latter occasion. See Illustration 1.

Subsequent searches lead me to claim that Liszt not only presided at the piano in Czerny's Reichstadt Waltz with Brilliant Variations for piano and orchestra, Op. 14, and performed the solo piano version of the same Czerny work in 1824 in London but that Czerny himself played a major role in Liszt's early success in the British capital, when the boy spent May-July 1824 and possibly longer giving concerts both public and private, and possibly composing works now mostly lost.

CALENDAR OF EVENTS, May-July 1824

1 May Liszt and his father arrive at 18 Great Marlborough Street

3 May They visit John Broadwood's piano warehouse at 32 Great Pulteney Street, Soho.

5 May John and Thomas Broadwood visit 18 Great Marlborough Street.

17–23 May Liszt performs at Dowager Viscountess Melville's home, 33 Portman Square, during the week that began on 17 May.

28 May Irish bard Thomas Moore hears Liszt perform at “Mrs Turner's.”

Late May/early June Thomas Boosey reprints Czerny's Grande Polonoise [sic] in B-flat, Op. 18, as a Liszt promotional.