Odyssey of Love - in aid of The National Brain Appeal

Join us for an evening of poetry and music celebrating the life of Franz Liszt to support The National Brain Appeal’s latest appeal, to redevelop the operating theatres including a new spinal theatre at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, WC1.

Liszt was a child prodigy who became the greatest keyboard virtuoso of his time, he was also a prolific composer – and a celebrity, whose female fans would faint at his concerts and fight over his cigar butts! Liszt had two great loves – the Countess Marie d’Agoult, the mother of his children and an aristocratic free-thinking rebel, and Princess Carolyne von Sayn Wittgenstein, an eccentric and cigar-smoking royal.

Award-winning pianist Lucy Parham has brought Liszt to life with a mix of his music and words from the many letters he wrote. Actors Martin Jarvis OBE and Joanna David – who is also a long-standing supporter and trustee of The National Brain Appeal – will be performing in this passionate and beautiful piece. Jarvis is a star of the theatre and the screen with a career spanning four decades but is probably best known for playing the part of Jon in the landmark adaptation of The Forsyte Saga in 1967 and more recently as the voiceover for the 2010 BBC series Just William. Joanna David is best known for her numerous television credits including Pride and Prejudice, The Darling Buds of May and Midsomer Murders.