This Franz Liszt guy has chops.
Franz Liszt is a fucking nut. Not only is he super talented, but he had super huge hands that allowed him to do crazy shit that normal people can’t do. For example, if you go to a piano and see the farthest interval you can play from your thumb to your pinky, it probably isn’t much more than an octave. Lizst could play parallel 12ths, which means that if he played C with his thumb, he could reach the F key that was a whole octave up. That’s…just retarded. Awesome, but retarded.
Personally, I like Chopin better, but most people i talk to seem to prefer Liszt. I just think some of Chopin’s music just reminds me of Castlevania, lol. 
Wouldn’t it be G? I’m only pointing that out because that’s even more retarded
I’m not even sure I could reach an octave. I have small hands for a guy, and last time I touched a piano, I think I remember having to reach pretty far just to play triads But I guess I’d have a bit more reach without having to use my middle finger.
I want to get a piano. There’s so much more you can do on it than guitar. Guitar’s still one of the better polyphonic instruments, but it’s sure not piano.
And I like Chopin’s sound better too. My last post was made before listening to him. Liszt still has chops though
Ahh, yeah, I guess it is G. I always do the math wrong after the first octave
Still, yeah, the composer you showed me is an oddity. Romantic composers (as I’m guessing you’re noticing by listening to Liszt and Chopin) are a lot more emotionally dynamic with their pieces. Although that Saint Saens piece in that, while the musical aspects of it sound romantic, it’s more like a Baroque piece in that it sticks to just ONE emotion for the entirety of the piece. That’s not a bad thing, in my opinion - as a vocalist, my specialty is Baroque aria - but there was a large movement to break away from that in the Classical era, saying that it didn’t accurately reflect the human condition to be emotionally static like that.
Maybe not for long periods of time, but I think changing key every 30 seconds sounds jumpy and incoherent. The varied emotions you find in one or two different keys are enough for a single song. These romantic compositions sound like they’re making the opposite mistake. They try way too hard to be radically emotional, and accomplish much less than a song with a more defined direction like the one I showed you. I want to be moved, but I don’t want to be jerked around like a ball-in-a-cup. They’re both good, but I like Saint-Saens’ dynamic intensity more than Chopin’s dynamic emotions.
You really nailed it with the Castlevania comment, too. I like really gothic sounding compositions on piano. I think they balance out the piano’s naturally mellow tone.
You might try Classical (the era) music, then. Classical music was the first movement that was like “This static emotion stuff is bullshit”, whereas Romantic came right after Classical, and that was more like “Classical doesn’t explore musically enough, and it doesn’t capture the intensity enough.” Classical has that emotional dynamism, but it’s a lot more refined.
Personally, though, I don’t like Classical because it’s TOO refined - other than the best of the best, a lot of the compositions get old really quickly. Maybe you might like Romantic composers from earlier in the era, like Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck, or Hector Berlioz. Schubert and Schumann do a lot of vocal music, though, so if you don’t care for listening to vocal music in foreign languages, a lot of their music probably won’t do the trick for you.
I haven’t heard any of his vocal stuff, but so far this Schubert guy is spot-on.
Here’s some of Schubert’s most famous vocal works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOiMVPSzr7E <-- Der Erlkonig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvTLlP6LnLs <-- Gretchen am Spinnrade
Or, anything from the song cycle Winterreise:
Here’s my favorite song from Winterreise, though:
Oh, and for shits and giggles, here’s “Die Allmacht”, the only Schubert song in my vocal repertoire (it’s really, really FUCKING hard):