Special Event

JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN

The dialogues of Franz Liszt and his daughter Cosima Wagner

by Don Mowatt

Sunday, November 27, 2011 7:00 pm at the Vancouver Academy of Music

Franz Liszt was a virtuoso pianist, composer, conductor, teacher and promoter without parallel in Europe for much of the Romantic Century. Flamboyant, reclusive, brooding and innovative, his influence on music in general and piano performance in particular was legendary and provocative.

His daughter Cosima, by Marie D’Agout, grew up with absent parents. Yet the emotional and artistic line between father and daughter remained strong through Cosima’s first marriage to conductor Hans von Bulow and her second to composer Richard Wagner. And, like her father, Cosima wielded unusual musical influence in Europe, especially in her case, in the period between the reign of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and the Weimar Republic.

Letters, diaries, memories and observations by friends and enemies form the basis of these powerful dialogues between Liszt and his daughter, with Liszt’s own dramatic piano music linking it all.

This is a sequel, marking Liszt’s 200th birthday, to Mowatt’s play ” Weeping Muse, Broken Lyre” , an account of the relationship of Chopin and George Sand performed by the same artists at last year’s Chopin Festival in Vancouver and in Poland, where the play has been translated into Polish.

Franz Liszt: Don Mowatt
Cosima Wagner: Carolyn Finlay
Piano soloist: Krystyna Tucka