Liszt: The Pilgrimage Years

Liszt: The Pilgrimage Years

This documentary attempts to recount the extraordinary, highly eventful life of the great Hungarian composer, with particular emphasis on his relation with Italy and with Italian art and culture. Although the whole of his life is covered, special attention is given to his first visit to Italy (1837-39), when Liszt conceived a great part of his most important compositions: the two Concertos for piano and orchestra, the Totentanz, the Transcendental Studies, the Dante Sonata. Furthermore, it was in Italy that Liszt invented the recital, and it was Italy that marked the beginning of his grand international tour that was to transform him into the first “rock-star” ante litteram. It was in those years that he experienced his first important sentimental relationship: with Marie d’Agoult, the mother of his three children, who accompanied him during his artistic pilgrimages, documenting them in a rich and intense diary. The composer’s life is narrated through the reading of original letters and diaries written by Liszt and Marie d’Agoult, accompanied by reconstructed scenes of the period that re-evoke their stays on Lake Como, in Milan, Pisa, San Rossore and Rome – the inspirational sources that fired Liszt’s creative instinct: to see Italy through the eyes of Liszt.