Active Years: 1811-1886

Position: Hungarian pianist, conductor, and composer.

Career Highlights: Transcendental Etudes, (not to be confused with that gas you get before a cavity is filled), and Faust Symphony.

Career Totals: Several symphonic poems, 2 piano concertos, over 100 solo piano works, works for organ, 4 masses, over 60 songs, and various other choral works.

Scouting Report: A classic head case, Liszt was a technically brilliant pianist who gained international fame and then considered becoming a priest, even going so far as to become an abbot. His piano music, written mostly for himself to play, shows off what must have been a prodigious technique. His orchestral music was groundbreaking in the way he used the orchestra to tell a story, a form of composition known as the tone poem. It was said that he was endowed with a legendary personal magnetism that entranced more than a few ladies.

Teammates and Contemporaries: Liszt’s contemporaries include Czerny of piano student exercise fame, Chopin, Brahms, and he paved the way for Rachmaninoff.

Fun Statistic: Liszt eloped with the Countess d’Agoult and had a daughter with her who later married Richard Wagner. Can you imagine the music at that wedding?