Volume 4,Issue 5
Exploring the Legacy of a Nineteenth-Century Virtuoso Pianist: Sigismund Thalberg
This paper is dedicated to Sigismund Thalberg, a giant of the piano virtuoso of the Romantic era: his life track, his pioneering pianistic novelties, and his important historical impact on music and his deciphering of the artistic value of his famous piano contest with Franz Liszt. Being now less known than his contemporaries such as Liszt, Thalberg enormously extended the tonal range of the piano, its capabilities of the timbre of the orchestra and its expressive power of the narrative of the piano, with his original three-hands effect and cantabile legato technique, with his pioneering work on the pedal, and with his operatic transcription fantasy. His legendary piano duel of 1837 with Liszt in Paris showed their very different performing aesthetics; it engendered a great interest among the public in pianistic virtuosity, and it changed the public persona of the Romantic pianist. His technical approaches have been part of the core curricula of music conservatories in Europe and America for a very long time, and his compositions are important texts to study the transition from Classical to Romantic pianism. It shows that Thalberg has an irreplaceable historical merit to revolutionize the pianistic technique of the Romantic, to advance the vociferated piano expression and to refine the genre of the operatic piano transcription, and to show his long-forgotten, but ever-echoing musical legacy.
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