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Hayner brings Liszt-Brahms feud to Piedmont concert Long before Kanye West and 50 Cent started their musical feud, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms launched a war of composing styles that has reverberated through the world of classical music for 150 years. You can be the judge of who won when Piedmont professor of music Dr. Phillip Hayner performs two of Liszt’s and Brahms’ combative piano sonatas in a concert at the college’s Center for Worship and Music in Demorest. The free concert, titled “Romantic Wars: First Blood,” is at 7:30 p.m., Sept. 29, and the public is invited. Hayner said the long-running feud between the two Romantic-era composers began when Brahms reportedly fell asleep while Liszt was unveiling his newly composed “Sonata in B Minor.” For his part, Brahms was not shy about referring to Liszt’s work as a “swindle,” and composed his own “Sonata in F Minor” as a musical retort to Liszt. The result, Hayner says, is that both composers produced magnificent works of extreme virtuosity that are similar, yet different. “Liszt used forward-looking harmonic language against Brahms’ stolid harmonies, and listeners can compare Liszt’s rhetorical flourishes against Brahms’ subtleties,” he said. The two sonatas are ideally suited to Piedmont’s recently added Steinway concert grand piano, he said. In addition to teaching piano, music theory, composition, and music history at Piedmont, Hayner is an active composer and concert pianist. -30-
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