It's Franz Liszt's birthday - 5 minutes listening to this piano solo will brighten your day

Liebesträume No. 3:

Today is the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Hungarian pianist and composer Franz (Ferencz) Liszt (1811-1886) in Raiding, Hungary. A child prodigy on the piano, Liszt studied in Vienna with Czerny and Salieri and made his Paris and London debuts in 1823 and 1824, respectively. His flamboyant virtuosity on the stage was reflected in his tempestuous personal life and his own music, by turns tender and bombastic. His oeuvre includes an enormous quantity of music for solo piano, two piano concertos, a dozen orchestral tone poems, six famous Hungarian Rhapsodies for orchestra, and several overlong and turgid organ pieces still heard occasionally today. Although Liszt traveled to Rome in 1861, joined the Franciscan order, and was known thereafter as the "Abbé Liszt," his new status caused little change in his notorious womanizing. 

As music critic Ernest Newman noted,

"He collected princesses and countesses as other men collected rare butterflies, or Japanese prints, or first editions."

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