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This chapter traces the development of the piano recital from the variety concerts of the early 19th-century to the present day, along with the associated repertoire and programme planning. Many great performers are covered, including Liszt, Clara Schumann, Busoni, Paderewski, Friedman, and Horowitz.

This chapter focuses on Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler's piano recitals in the United States. It begins with a discussion of the development of an almost sacred canon of composers and the elevation of classical music to a virtual religious status as articulated by critic and transcendentalist John Sullivan Dwight and others. It then considers the bifurcation of various U.S. cultural activities into separate spheres—popular and elite—as described by historian Lawrence Levine, and how recent scholars have modified Levine's position with regard to the evolution of music in nineteenth-century America. The chapter also chronicles the practical aspects of touring in the nation, such as train travel, itineraries, packing lists, and hotels. Finally, it describes Bloomfield-Zeisler's recitals and how they compared with those of her contemporaries, both male and female; the U.S. audiences during that time—their makeup, behavior, etiquette, and their reactions to Bloomfield-Zeisler's performances; and how Bloomfield-Zeisler played.

By the closing decades of the 19th century, the solo piano recital containing a survey of historical repertoire had won full acceptance, reflecting the increased view of music as edification rather than entertainment. Although some writers have contended that the visiting virtuosos were more harmful than beneficial, earlier testimony is clear that at the time most Americans believed they were a beneficent phenomenon, awakening musical interest among a wide range of audiences and providing excellent models for students and aspiring professional musicians.

This chapter focuses on “The Night's Music”, the fourth movement in Béla Bartók's December 1926 piano recital. It suggests that the acceptance of this work even among the conservative Hungarian audiences of Bartók's day is perhaps surprising for a work that would come to be seen as the locus classicus of a uniquely Bartókian contribution to the language of musical modernism. It explains that Bartók used a highly dissonant but very soft tone cluster made up of five adjacent semitones as a static background throughout most of the work.

This chapter examines the experience of U.S. music students in late nineteenth-century Vienna as well as the musical scene at that time. In the 1870s and 1880s, Viennese audiences attended the premieres of works by Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi. They also flocked to piano recitals by Rafael Joseffy, Anton Rubinstein, Hans von Bülow, and Franz Liszt. The chapter considers Fanny Blumenfeld's living conditions, her struggles with health problems, and her studies with Theodor Leschetizky, which culminated in successful performances before Viennese critics that provided her with the European stamp of approval that was almost always necessary for success in the United States. It also recounts her first meeting with her future husband, Sigmund Zeisler.