On October 22 the musical world celebrates the bicentenary of the birth of Franz Liszt, a musician who left the world a staggering musical legacy. His work list in the 2000 edition of Grove – just the list of titles – runs to more than 86 pages. The Hyperion recordings of his complete piano works, played by Leslie Howard, runs to 99 CDs.

And composing wasn’t even the main thrust of Liszt’s life. He was the greatest piano virtuoso of the 19th century, the first real performing superstar. He was committed to music of the past, and to new music written by composers largely shunned by the mainstream. He was a man of contradictions, a man of strong religious devotion, yet also a man who loved women passionately and was a party to two celebrated and scandalous relationships, among other liaisons.

The young Liszt was taken to Vienna to study with Czerny in 1822. In April 1823 he met Beethoven. By December 1823 he was living in Paris, his base for some years, although he toured widely.

After the death of his father in August 1827, Liszt entered a dark period. Grief, and the fallout of a thwarted love affair, led to an emotional collapse. He suffered “religious mania” for three years, during which time he undertook little musical activity and was even reported to have died. The revolution of 1830 roused him, yet his intense religious involvements continued. Later in life, he even entered the lower orders of the church. 

Around this time Liszt met Chopin, who arrived in Paris in 1831, but there was no great friendship between the two. Paganini was another matter. The Italian violin virtuoso made his Paris debut in 1831, impressing Liszt so much he wrote his own set of Grandes études de Paganini based on the solo violin caprices.

In late 1832, Liszt met the Countess Marie d’Agoult, an unhappily married French aristocrat. She was 28; he was 22; and their affair lasted 12 years. The second of their three children was Cosima (born 1837). She later achieved prominence as the wife of the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow, whom she later left for Richard Wagner.

Marie and Liszt’s relationship created a great scandal in Parisian society. Between 1835 and 1839 the pair travelled widely, the so-called “Years of Pilgrimage” – these travels are reflected in Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage suite.

When the relationship ended in 1839, Liszt embarked on a period in which he established himself as the greatest virtuoso of his age. These nine years are referred to as the Glanzzeit, the “time of splendour”. He gave over 1,000 concerts during this period, establishing precedents now regarded as standard. He was the first to perform entire recitals from memory; the first to plan recital programs across a broad range of repertoire; he even coined the word “recital” itself. He performed across Europe, and crowds frequently exhibited mass hysteria, or “Lisztomania”, in his presence.

In Kiev in 1847, near the end of the Glanzzeit, Liszt met Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein. They became lovers, despite the fact that she was married, and she struggled, in vain, for 13 years to have her unhappy marriage annulled in order to marry Liszt. It was the Princess who encouraged Liszt to focus entirely on composition, and in 1848 Liszt took up the specially created post of Kapellmeister-in-Extraordinary to the Duke of Weimar, beginning a period of great creativity during which he composed the first 12 symphonic poems, a form Liszt invented.

For the last 15 years of his life the composer split his time among Weimar, Rome and Budapest. His late works show him striving after new forms of expression, and some of his music anticipates the early 20th-century breakdown of traditional harmony. 

In 1886, Franz Liszt’s health deteriorated while he was in Bayreuth. He died on July 31, two and a half months short of his 75th birthday.