Franz Liszt (1811-1886) once said, "My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future." Indeed, though as both performer and composer he was one of the potent forces of Romanticism, Liszt's impact on modernism—on composers such as Ravel, Scriabin and Schönberg—was considerable. Ferruccio Busoni proclaimed, "We are all descended from him radically."

From the outset of his career, Liszt was considered the greatest of all pianists. But...