Often, how it is played makes all the difference. Had it not been for Horowitz, I wouldn't be listening to Chopin. I used to find his music insipid and my early exposure to it was from Rubenstein, a famed Chopin interpretor. Oddly, Horowitz does nothing to make me enjoy Liszt as Rubenstein did.

Brendel is quite mean about Rachmaninoff D:

Well, consider me a convert.

Inspired by forum members' general love of Liszt, as well as Brendel's words, I've begun listening to him, for the first time in earnest. For the last 24h it's been mostly the trancendental etudes, and when you have several recordings to compare (from Naxos music library) and the scores to follow along with (from imslp.org), you can really get into it.

And far from feeling like second-rate Chopin, or any kind of Chopin, he now just feels like Liszt. And he's just great!

(Actually, in his combination of beautiful melody and lack of restraint, he really reminds me, to my surprise, of Schubert. Surely the middle section of the slow movement of Schubert's late A major sonata is Lisztian.)

Well I'll throw in my two cents. I think that a lot of people miss the overall reason for a composer/pianist' being and existence sometimes. Liszt did a great service to us all with his transcriptions and adaptations to solo piano. His personal research into developing technique paved the way to express ideas on a piano that were inconceivable before. His merit lies within his endeavors.

Still I must add that I've been a deep listener of Liszt for quite some time and I'm familiar with many of his works ( compositions ) and his creation and development of melodies is just as profound as any other composer.

The real question is....what constitutes a melody in our opinion. If its not catchy or memorable is it still a melody? I feel it reflects a lot about our musical understanding. When I first began listening to piano music, there were hundreds of pieces that I couldn't understand for the life of me, why they were popular or why one would bother to play them. It wasn't until after I began to understand the nature of music that I discovered the melodies within the music that were invisible to me at first.

Am I alone on this????

Liszt wrote many beautifully singing, melodic pieces. But he also wrote many that were strictly for showing off his own virtuosity; I think sometimes the two are mutually exclusive but by no means did he completely lack in melody. I think we tend to hear the flashy ones more often but there is some heartbreakingly beautiful Liszt out there.

With all liszt-experts around I would be delighted to hear what are those "many pieces" that were written for showing off only.
Do not mention etudes because they do have melodies and very good ones :>