When I met Nike Wagner early last month in the bustling Opus restaurant of Bonn’s Beethovenhalle, she was wearily expecting yet another interview about the city’s Beethovenfest, which had just opened, and of which she is director.

But when I told her I’d like to talk to her about her great-great-grandfather, the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt (father-in-law to her great-grandfather Richard Wagner) her eyes sparkled.

“About Liszt? Marvellous! Go ahead,” she smiled, as we went on to acknowledge the link between Beethoven and the 11-year-old Liszt when the publisher Diabelli asked them both to contribute a variation each to a compendium based on a theme of his own.

But then we went on to discuss Liszt’s legacy to the world.

“There are so many things,” she quietly begins. “I think Liszt was, in fact, a great composer, not only for piano but also for orchestra. He invented the symphonic poem, which was a great legacy that Richard Strauss, for example, could continue.

“Somehow Liszt has never been esteemed – under-rated, thank you so much! – in the concert repertoire, so let’s change that!

“He changed the idea of the piano, he made the piano sound like an orchestra. He invented new techniques, to transcribe the nine symphonies of Beethoven for the piano. He gave the piano the status of an orchestra. He pushed the development of the mechanics of the instrument with piano-manufacturers.

“Then on the musical side, think of the B minor Piano Sonata (the world’s greatest, we both agree), four movements into one, absolutely revolutionary. Fantasy, liberty, romantic ideas transcending everything.”

Then Frau Wagner moves on to a different aspect of Liszt.

“He invented the kind of modern music festival, beginning in Weimar – where he conducted the premiere of Wagner’s Lohengrin – where he assembled the world’s greatest performers and where he promoted great composers. He was a splendid character, very civil, very altruistic, always doing things for his colleagues – not only Wagner – promoting friends like Berlioz, and so unselfish. That’s unusual for a musician, for a composer.

Stephen Hough
Stephen Hough

“He was a great promoter, a great organiser. And he was probably the greatest pianist who ever lived, to judge from contemporary witnesses.

“And as a teacher he created a whole school, and he taught without taking money! He put on benefit concerts for the poor people who suffered in the great flood in Budapest, he cared for the musicians in poverty, for their widows, and so on a social level he was very active.

“He also worked to give music a proper status, not just as entertainment for aristocratic society. So this was putting music on another level, and Wagner, of course, was very much his follower, oh my! The composer and his music shouldn’t any longer be just a servant.”

Nike Wagner homes into a sharp focus on her great-great-grandfather’s piano works. “He’s still a challenge for pianists. The Transcendental Studies... hardly anybody plays them, they are such a challenge.

“But as soon as a pianist makes you forget the technical difficulties, then they sound easy. They should be part of the repertoire, not to mention all the operatic transcriptions, which helped other composers to become known.

“Liszt brought Beethoven transcriptions to Paris, where they didn’t know Beethoven! You wouldn’t believe it nowadays. He was so engaged with the cause of music itself and, of course, its beauty.

“And Liszt and Wagner were both completely unanimous about Beethoven – they were Beethovena dorers! Wagner learned by copying the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and that’s the only work of another composer allowed to be played in Wagner’s Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

“Liszt founded the Beethoven Festival here in 1845, celebrating what would have been the composer’s 75th birthday. Liszt paid for the statue, as people didn’t manage to get the money together, and he had them build a wooden hall for 2,000 people for the celebrations, and they had to do it in 11 days. There were many people coming from all over, including royalty, and Liszt wrote a cantata for this occasion, the Beethoven Birthday Cantata.

“And now here in Bonn I have a very warm feeling. Liszt is behind me!”

* Stephen Hough performs a Liszt selection at Symphony Hall on October 26 (7.30pm). Details on 0121 780 3333.