I started today at an excellent Liszt exhibition in the modern exhibition space at the back of the Schillerhaus: 'Franz Liszt: a European in Weimar', this being his 200th anniversary. Whilst I enjoy his music I know little of his history, so I was taking copious notes. An excellent free audio guide. Interesting to hear of the background of Hummel and Czerny in his performances and compositions, his 1823 tour when he was hailed as the 'New Mozart', his father Adam's management expertise (like Leopold Mozart's), and his Diabelli variations (I only know Beethoven's) which were his first published composition at the age of 11. Well, I was there for an hour and a half.
After a break in the Herderkirche – the Stadtkirche St Peter and St Paul – where I went to see Lucas Cranach's final painting over the altar, I moved on to another Liszt-related exhibition in the Schloss, where a dozen pianos spanning 1792 to 1825 were on display among the regular galleries. One that the London maker Broadwood gave to Beethoven passed on to Liszt on Beethoven's death, and was highly valued by Liszt for the rest of his life. Also in the Schloss their small permanent exhibition of exquisite paintings by Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer.
Then a late picnic lunch in the sun in the delightful Park an der Ilm, looking across to Goethe's summer house, on the way to the Haus am Horn, a somewhat experimental house based on Bauhaus principles, designed by the artist Georg Muche and built during the Bauhaus exhibition in 1923. I thought my visit would be brief, but the curator gave me – and a few other visitors who joined us on the way – a most interesting tour of the small house, and I ended up staying an hour and a half there as well.
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