Grieg Plays for Liszt

Edvard Grieg, writing from Rome, February 17th, 1870:

Dear Parents! Yesterday as I was sitting in the Scandinavian Club playing whist, when I received a message that Liszt would like to see me at his house.

This wasn’t my first meeting with him. Recently he was in town and expecting me, so I rushed out to see him. He lives close to the Titus Triumphal Arch and the old Roman Forum, in a monastery. I was told that he likes for people to bring something with them so I took my last violin sonata, wrote on the outside “To Dr. F. Liszt with admiration,” also took my funeral march for Nordraak and a booklet of songs, and hurried down the street with butterflies in my stomach. But I could have spared myself the anxiety because it would be hard to find a more lovable man than Liszt.

Grieg recalled that Liszt’s eyes looked hungrily at the sonata tucked under his harm and his long spidery fingers drew so close that Grieg thought it best to open the packet at once. Liszt began to turn the pages, gave the first part of the sonata a cursory reading, nodding occasionally with a “Bravo!” or a “very lovely.” Then, Grieg confessed, Liszt put him on the spot:

My spirits began to soar, but when he asked me to play the sonata my courage failed me completely. Never had I tried to put the whole thing together for the puano, and I would gladly have avoided making a mess of it in front of him, but I was stuck. So I began on his beaitufiul Chickering grand piano. Right at the beginning, where the violin breaks in with a little baroque but national passage, he exclaimed, “How bold! I like it. Let’s hear it again.”

And when the violin the second time slips into the adagio, he played the violin higher up on the piano in octaves with such beautiful expression, so remarkably true and singing, that I smiled inwardly. Those were the first notes I heard from Liszt.