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When reading through the Liszt and the keyboard chapter from the Walker biographies I came across this:

What do you think of this approach to practicing scales?

How often do you get to use standard scale fingering for a scale passage in a piece? In my experience, not that often. But I don't think I want to practice the scales that way...

Sam

This is probably one reason that Franz Liszt was the greatest pianist ever. Complete command of all his fingers.

And of course there is the incident where Liszt sliced a finger badly before a concert. He was told that he should cancel, since it would be impossible to play. He basically said he would use his other fingers instead, and gave another fantastic concert.

Basically a silly idea because there is so much more that's important to practice. But even if I had eight hours/day to practice that approach to scales would not be on my list given that amount of time.

I would think that by the time Liszt came up with this idea, he was already a very proficient player and could probably play scales while standing on his head without it affecting anything.

I've been working on scales in my lessons recently, and we've been looking at this and that. The point of fingering is to make a passages go as easily as possible, so there are considerations such as black keys, and short and long fingers. Having the least number of thumb turns is another thing we talked about recently, and also less awkward ones. One thing I worked with are modes. Would you play E Phyrgian the same as C major (Ionian) finger-wise. I.e. if in C major, E is played with 3 of both hands, would you still start on 3 for several octaves of E Phrygian. The answer, per the principles I'm learning, is no - you'd start on 5 & 1 respectively, same fingering as for C major starting at the Tonic, because you have less thumb turns.

C major could be played with any fingering since it's all one flat landscape with no black keys. In actual music, your scales will start at some place that may not be the Tonic, and end someplace ditto. You adjust accordingly (as Sam S said).

I'm sure it's a tale.

It is a true story, although not the bit about it being a brilliant concert. It was the only time that Busoni saw LIszt play and was rather disappointed ...

Considering that Busoni was only 10 years old at the time, I would take that comment as not significant.

And Liszt was 65 years old at the time. The critic Hanslick noted of this performance, that Liszt's playing "delighted his audience" and was characterized by "nobility and refinement". Taken from Alan Walker's Franz Liszt:The Final Years 1861-1886.

Busoni was no ordinary 10 year old, so that in itself is not an argument. I read this in a Busoni biography years ago, so I'll see if I can find if I still have the book and double check.

Thank you for sharing that lovely event!