Ferenc Liszt was one of those composers who enjoyed pushing boundaries. He even managed to invert the classic chronology of inspiration before creation. In the case of one of his first (and most famous) symphonic poems, entitled Preludes, the idea for the title – alluding to an ode by Alphonse de Lamartine – came when the work was almost finished (it was originally intended as an overture to the cycle The Four Elements).

In 1855 an unusual event took place in Weimar, with Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique performed in the presence and with the active participation of both composers. Liszt sat at the piano; Berlioz conducted the orchestra. The first sketches for Liszt’s work date as far back as 1830, so it may have taken as long as 25 years for the composer to complete this concerto, which lasts less than 20 minutes and was unveiled to the public in Weimar. This work is long enough to give the pianist the opportunity to show off their technical skills, as is foreshadowed by the work’s striking opening, with the famous octave theme, concealing – as the anecdote goes – a certain (never revealed) joke on fussy critics.

The notion of the extra-musical programme, eagerly taken up by the Romantics, was elevated by Alexander Scriabin to the registers of transcendence and mysticism. His Symphony No. 3, from the early twentieth century, also known as the ‘Divine Poem’, is considered one of the greatest achievements on his path to multimedia expressionist mysteries.