Total Liszt

Enter the wild, heady and relentlessly imaginative world of Franz Liszt, with music full of imposing power and his trademark piano fireworks.

Liszt’s works speak of a brilliant musical imagination, sparked by fantastical stories and vivid impressions drawn from art and the world around him. Sir Antonio Pappano brings together three works that reveal these rich sources of inspiration – a painting encountered on an Italian sojourn in Sposalizio, the powerful drama of Goethe’s Faust, and a lifelong fascination with the macabre.

Pianist Alice Sara Ott is more than a match for Liszt’s famously virtuosic music. She joins Pappano and the LSO for the explosive Totentanz (Dance of Death), taking on its wild darkness, hammering sounds and cascades of chords that whip up and down the piano’s keyboard.