Toward Re-Enchantment: Beauty as a Portal to the Sacred

Please join us this fall for the 2026 American Liszt Society Festival “Toward Re-Enchantment: Beauty as a Portal to the Sacred” to be held at the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. The festival explores the theme of beauty as a means of revealing a shared transcendent reality offering an inspiring glimpse of our human destiny. Featured performances include the opening evening gala with Liszt’s ground-breaking Via Crucis with pianist Nicholas Susi and the University Singers. This will be followed by the UNL Orchestra’s performance of Liszt’s final tone poem From the Cradle to the Grave and the monumental chant inspired concerto Totentanz with Richard Fountain soloist. The second evening of the festival in collaboration with the Lied Center for Performing Arts features Van Cliburn finalist Angel Stanislav Wang in a solo piano recital including Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor. Other highlights of the festival include a complete performance of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen and Liszt’s third book of Années de pèlerinage. Invited scholars include renowned Liszt and Chopin scholar Alan Walker exploring the moral imperative of art immortalized in Liszt’s “Genie Oblige!” and theology of art scholar Junius Johnson unpacking the inherent theology of beauty resulting from the human encounter with art. Other composers featured include Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Franck, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Bach, and Schumann as well as contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, Richard Danielpour, Victoria Bond, N. Lincoln Hanks, Einojuhani Rautavaara, and Judith Shatin. The festival will also feature world premieres by Sawyer Gage and Andrew Fowler. The festival concludes with a celebratory banquet as we reminisce on an unforgettable three days exploring a re-enchanted world. Register now!