Liszt has a reputation for writing music of the greatest difficulty, and some of

his earlier etudes and transcriptions do indeed reach to the edges of the possible;
but the pieces that we hear regularly (the mature works) are much less hard than
they sound. In fact, that is part of the genius of Liszt: to make something sound
more difficult than it is. He understood the keyboard and explored its
possibilities like no other before, and he laid the foundation on which everyone
since has built. His glittering effects, which rendered his audiences open-mouthed
with admiration, involve a principle of maximum effectiveness and minimal effort.