This is, shall we say, a portrait of the master left to us by one of his American pupils, Amy Fray, who met him during the Weimar period.
"I knew him from his portrait, and I found it very amusing and interesting to observe him. He was in a box and was paying his respects to three ladies... He sat with his back to the stage, and apparently without paying any attention to the performance, because he chatted continuously. And yet nothing escaped him; I noticed this from his expressions and his gestures. Liszt is the most interesting and extraordinary man one can imagine. Tall and thin, with sunken eyes, bushy eyebrows, and long iron-gray hair that he wears parted in the middle... His hands are very thin, with long, sharp fingers that seem to have twice as many joints as other people's fingers."
"But the most extraordinary thing about Liszt is his wonderful variety of expression. Now his face appears dreamy, shadowed, tragic. Immediately after, he will be insinuating, amiable, ironic, sardonic, but always with the same charming grace of manner."
"Liszt has the air of having gone through all sorts of things; he has a face furrowed by experience. He wears a long abbatial robe that reaches his feet. He made me think above all of a wizard from another time, and it seemed to me that with a touch of a magic wand he could transform us all! One cannot have any idea of his power of persuasion."
"He does not give paid lessons: he is too great for that, but if one has enough talent, one can go to him and play something for him. Around six is the time when he receives his pupils..."
"Here and there he makes an observation, or plays a passage, and with a few words gives one enough to think about for the rest of one's life."
"It was the first time I heard him play and I do not know what could have been more wonderful... He represents the entire scale of human emotion. His pupils adore him. There is such vivacity in everything he plays that it does not seem as if one is listening to music, but rather as if a truly living form is being evoked, and seen breathing before our eyes. Hearing him play gives me a magical impression; it seems to me that the air becomes populated with spirits."
"How he can bear to listen to us playing, I truly cannot imagine. It must tear his ear terribly, I believe, because everything must sound expressionless to him, in comparison with his wonderful conception. His touch and his particular way of using the pedal are two secrets..."
"The more I see and hear Liszt, the more I am overcome with amazement. I can neither sleep nor eat on the days when I go to see him... I have never seen anyone so perfectly beautiful as he appears when he sits at the piano, and he is now almost an old man... His personal magnetism is immense. Liszt knows the influence he exerts on people, because he always fixes his eyes on one of us when he plays, and I believe he tries to snatch our hearts..."
"...he listens to every note, and knows exactly what effect he wishes to produce, and how he must do it. In reality, he is two people in one: the listener and the performer. But what immense self-mastery this implies... Perhaps the secret of Liszt's charm is this power of intense and wild emotion, which feels possessed by him, together with the most perfect mastery over it..."