OLD COMPOSERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19840, 14 May 1927, Page 14 (Supplement)

OLD COMPOSERS

BEETHOVEN AND THE- MARVEL LOUS BOY Bethoven was Liszt’s boyhood s ideal. The old composer, deaf and in poverty, was prevailed upon to receive the gifted child and hear him play. He was not cordial, for he hated the idea of the “p<*>o virtuoso,” and the newspapers were already describing the boy as that. But. to the surprise of Liszt and his father, they saw the great, man enter a few days later the Vienna concert room where the young genius was giving a concert in the presence of an audience of 4009. “Young Liszt,’' says a chronicler, “trembling for the first time, looked at the master seated not far away, eyes fixed upon him. He attacked Hammel’s Concerto, and then a fantasia of his own composition. Hardly had he finished, amid the enthusiastic shouts of the Viennese, when Beethoven hurried to the stage, grasped the child, and kissed him on the forehead. This consecration was dearer to him than the hymns to his growing glory sung next day in the Viennese newspapers.”