Liszt and Bratislava

Liszt’s First Public Concert
Took Place in Bratislava

During the concert, Liszt also performed the Piano Concerto No. 3 by Bratislava-born composer J. N. Hummel.

The first newspaper mention of a Franz Liszt concert anywhere in the world:
26 November 1820, Bratislava, Pressburger Zeitung:

“Last Sunday, the 26th, at noon, the 9-year-old piano virtuoso Liszt had the honour of performing before an assembly of the finest local nobility and connoisseurs of music in the home of Count Michael Esterházy. His extraordinary skill and ability to decipher the most difficult scores and perform at sight whatever is placed before him surpass all understanding and justify the highest expectations.”

As a result of this performance, the Hungarian nobility decided to establish a fund to support Liszt’s further studies. For the following six years, they guaranteed him an annual scholarship of 600 florins. The principal contributors included Counts Amadé, Szapáry, and Michael Esterházy.

Liszt Came to Regard Bratislava
as One of His Concert Cities

• Liszt repeatedly visited Bratislava during his piano touring years (giving several public concerts and an unknown number of private performances). Throughout his life, he maintained personal and written contact with numerous musical, cultural, and other prominent figures from Bratislava.
• Liszt strongly supported the concerts of Bratislava’s most important musical institution of the 19th century, the Church Music Society (Kirchenmusikverein). In some years, he was its largest financial contributor and personally conducted its concerts on several occasions.
• Liszt particularly enjoyed visiting and praying in St. Martin’s Cathedral. He conducted concerts there several times, including his final major concert in 1884, conducting his Hungarian Coronation Mass.

Liszt’s Father

• Born on 16 December 1776 in Edelsthal (present-day Austria).
• Studied at the Royal Catholic Grammar School in Bratislava, today’s grammar school on Grösslingová Street, where he graduated in 1795.
• In the same year, he entered the Franciscan Order as a novice in Malacky. In 1796, he continued in the monastery in Trnava, from which he was expelled on 29 July 1797 due to “instability and changing moods.”
• Between 1797 and 1798, he studied philosophy at the university in Bratislava.
• As a musician, he participated on 13 December 1808 in the premiere of Beethoven’s Mass in C major in Eisenstadt in the composer’s presence, and through music became personally acquainted with Hummel, Haydn, and Cherubini.