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Oliver Hilmes, the author of several best-selling biographies, lives in Berlin, Germany. Stewart Spencer is an acclaimed translator whose work includes biographies of Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Cosima Wagner, and W. A. Mozart.
. . . makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of Liszt as a man and superstar. Hilmes shines a light into the shadows behind a life lived in the spotlight, and he finds some surprising and indeed entertaining details there. --Andrew Taylor, Times If this book has a once-over-lightly feel, that is because there were many intertwined strands in Liszt's extraordinary life, each of which could merit a book in itself. . . . Hilmes is illuminating on the emergence--and continuance into old age--of Liszt's preternatural gifts as a pianist. And by drawing on hitherto unpublished documentary sources he provides a riveting chronicle of the composer's tangled relationships. --Economist Invaluable: it is brilliantly written and comprehends material found nowhere else. Spencer's English translation is beyond praise. --Choice [Hilmes] sheds useful light on the way that Liszt's achievement arose as much from his weaknesses as from his strengths. --New York Review of Books This is the book about Liszt I have been waiting for, vividly evoking both him and his context to reveal him as one the central figures--if not the central figure--of Western music in the nineteenth century, a vital link between Beethoven and Bartok, and a truly great and generous man. At last, we see him whole. --Simon Callow
