Free Republic

Special to the Star-Telegram One year after his death, hundreds of items from the estate of Van Cliburn are going on sale at Christie’s auction house in New York. The pianist, who died in February 2013, filled his Westover Hills home with items encountered during his world travels — fine art, furnishings, tableware — and selected with a veteran collector’s eye. Two years ago, Cliburn parted with some of his most valuable treasures at a Christie’s auction of what was billed as “The Van Cliburn Collection.” That sale earned almost $4.4 million, beating a presale estimate of $3 million. The...

On Oct. 22, 1811, Franz Liszt was born in the Hungarian (now Austrian) village of Raiding. His bicentenary follows hard on the heels of Chopin’s, last year, and anticipates Wagner’s and Verdi’s, in 2013. But whereas no one really doubts the greatness of Wagner or Verdi, and Chopin seems universally beloved, things are not so straightforward with Liszt. He was, to be sure, an unrivaled performer (“A god for pianists” in Berlioz’s words), a man of unusually catholic artistic interests and the 19th century’s nearest approach to a Hollywood superstar. But although he is surely significant enough to celebrate, the...