Such a month of dissipation! You must know that at my time of life I run
down a bit every spring, and our family physician prescribed a course of
scale exercises on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, and after that--New
York, for Lenten recreation! Now, New York is not quiet, nor is it ever
Lenten. A crowded town, huddled on an island far too small for its
inconceivably uncivilized population, its inhabitants can never know the
value of leisure or freedom from noise. Because he is always in a hurry
a New York man fancies that he is intellectual. The consequences
artistically are dire. New York boasts--yes, literally _boasts_--the
biggest, noisiest, and poorest orchestra in the country. I refer to the
Philharmonic Society, with its wretched wood-wind, its mediocre brass,
and its aggregation of rasping strings. All the vaudeville and
lightning-change conductors have not put this band on a level with the
Boston, the Philadelphia, or the Chicago organizations. Nor does the
opera please me much better. Noise, at the expense of music; quantity,
instead of quality; all the _tempi_ distorted and _fortes_ exaggerated,
so as to make effect. Effect, effect, effect! That is the ideal of New
York conductors. This coarsening, cheapening, and magnification of
details are resultants of the restless, uncomfortable, and soulless life
of the much overrated Manhattan.
Naturally, I am a Philadelphian, and my strictures will be set down to
old fogyism. But show me a noise-loving city and I will show you an
inartistic one. Schopenhauer was right in this matter; insensibility to
noise argues a less refined organism. And New York may spend a million
of money on music every season, and still it is not a musical city. The
opera is the least sign; opera is a social function--sometimes a circus,
never a temple of art. The final, the infallible test is the maintenance
of an orchestra. New York has no permanent orchestra; though there is an
attempt to make of the New York Symphony Society a worthy rival to the
Philadelphia and Boston orchestras. So much for my enjoyment in the
larger forms of music--symphony, oratorio and opera.
But my visit was not without compensations. I attended piano concerts by
Eugen d'Albert, Ignace Jan Paderewski, and Rafael Joseffy. Pachmann I
had heard earlier in the season in my own home city. So in one season I
listened to four out of six of the world's greatest pianists. And it was
very stimulating to both ears and memory. It also affords me an
opportunity to preach for you a little sermon on Touch (Tone and Technic
were the respective themes of my last two letters), which I have had in
my mind for some time. Do not be alarmed. I say "sermon," but I mean
nothing more than a comparison of modern methods of touch, as
exemplified by the performances of the above four men, with the style of
touch employed by the pianists of my generation: Thalberg, Liszt,
Gottschalk, Tausig, Rubinstein, Von Bülow, Henselt, and a few others.
Pachmann is the same little wonder-worker that I knew when he studied
many years ago in Vienna with Dachs. This same Dachs turned out some
finished pupils, though his reputation, curiously enough, never equalled
that of the over-puffed Leschetizky, or Epstein, or Anton Door, all
teachers in the Austrian capital. I recall Anthony Stankowitch, now in
Chicago, and Benno Schoenberger, now in London, as Dachs' pupils.
Schoenberger has a touch of gold and a style almost as jeweled as
Pachmann's--but more virile. It must not be forgotten that Pachmann has
fine nerves--with such an exquisite touch, his organization must be of
supernal delicacy--but little muscular vigor. Consider his narrow
shoulders and slender arms--height of figure has nothing to do with
muscular incompatibility; d'Albert is almost a dwarf, yet a colossus of
strength. So let us call Pachmann, a survival of an older school, a
charming school. Touch was the shibboleth of that school, not tone; and
technic was often achieved at the expense of more spiritual qualities.
The three most _beautiful_ touches of the piano of the nineteenth
century were those of Chopin, Thalberg, and Henselt. Apart from any
consideration of other gifts, these three men--a Pole, a Hebrew, and a
German--possessed touches that sang and melted in your ears, ravished
your ears. Finer in a vocal sense was Thalberg's touch than Liszt's;
finer Henselt's than Thalberg's, because more euphonious, and nobler in
tonal texture; and more poetic than either of these two was Chopin's
ethereal touch. To-day Joseffy is the nearest approach we have to
Chopin, Paderewski to Henselt, Pachmann to Thalberg--save in the matter
of a robust _fortissimo_, which the tiny Russian virtuoso does not
boast.
After Chopin, Thalberg, and Henselt, the orchestral school had its
sway--it still has. Liszt, Tausig, Rubinstein set the pace for all
latter-day piano playing. And while it may sound presumptuous, I am
inclined to think that their successors are not far behind them in the
matter of tonal volume. If Liszt or Tausig, or, for that matter,
Rubinstein, produced more clangor from their instruments than Eugen
d'Albert, then my aural memory is at fault. My recollection of Liszt is
a vivid one: to me he was iron; Tausig, steel; Rubinstein, gold. This
metallic classification is not intended to praise gold at the expense of
steel, or iron to the detriment of gold. It is merely my way of
describing the adamantine qualities of Liszt and Tausig--two magnetic
mountains of the kind told of in _Sinbad, the Sailor_, to which was
attracted whatever came within their radius. And Rubinstein--what a man,
what an artist, what a _heart!_ As Joseffy once put it, Rubinstein's was
not a pianist's touch, but the mellow tone of a French horn!
Rosenthal's art probably matches Tausig's in technic and tone.
Paderewski, who has broadened and developed amazingly during ten years,
has many of Henselt's traits--and I am sure he never heard the elder
pianist. But he belongs to that group: tonal euphony, supple technic, a
caressing manner, and a perfect control of self. Remember, I am speaking
of the Henselt who played for a few friends, not the frightened,
semi-limp pianist who emerged at long intervals before the public.
Paderewski is thrice as poetic as Henselt--who in the matter of
emotional depth seldom attempted any more than the delineation of the
suave and elegant, though he often played Weber with glorious fire and
brilliancy.
At this moment it is hard to say where Paderewski will end. I beg to
differ from Mr. Edward Baxter Perry, who once declared that the Polish
virtuoso played at his previous season no different from his earlier
visits. The Paderewski of 1902 and 1905 is very unlike the Paderewski of
1891. His style more nearly approximates Rubinstein's _plus_ the
refinement of the Henselt school. He has sacrificed certain qualities.
That was inevitable. All great art is achieved at the expense--either by
suppression or enlargement--of something precious. Paderewski pounds
more; nor is he always letter perfect; but do not forget that pounding
from Paderewski is not the same as pounding from Tom, Dick, and Harry.
And, like Rubinstein, his spilled notes are more valuable than other
pianist's scrupulously played ones. In reality, after carefully watching
the career of this remarkable man, I have reached the conclusion that he
is passing through a transition period in his "pianism." Tired of his
old, subdued, poetic manner; tired of being called a _salon_ pianist
by--yes, Oskar Bie said so in his book on the pianoforte; and in the
same chapter wrote of the fire and fury of Gabrilowitsch ("he drives the
horses of Rubinstein," said Bie; he must have meant "ponies!")--critics,
Paderewski began to study the grand manner. He may achieve it, for his
endurance is phenomenal. Any pianist who could do what I heard him do in
New York--give eight encores after an exhausting program--may well lay
claim to the possession of the grand manner. His tone is still forced;
you hear the _chug_ of the suffering wires; but who cares for
details--when the general performance is on so exalted a plane? And his
touch is absolutely luscious in cantabile.
With d'Albert our interest is, nowadays, cerebral. When he was a youth
he upset Weimar with his volcanic performances. Rumor said that he came
naturally by his superb gifts (the Tausig legend is still believed in
Germany). Now his indifference to his medium of expression does not
prevent him from lavishing upon the interpretation of masterpieces the
most intellectual brain since Von Bülow's--and _entre nous_, ten times
the musical equipment. D'Albert plays Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as no
one else on this globe--and he matches Paderewski in his merciless abuse
of the keyboard. Either a new instrument, capable of sustaining the
ferocious attacks upon it, must be fabricated, or else there must be a
return to older styles.
And that fixed star in the pianistic firmament, one who refuses to
descend to earth and please the groundlings--Rafael Joseffy--is for me
the most satisfying of all the pianists. Never any excess of emotional
display; never silly sentimentalizings, but a lofty, detached style,
impeccable technic, tone as beautiful as starlight--yes, Joseffy is the
enchanter who wins me with his disdainful spells. I heard him play the
Chopin E minor and the Liszt A major concertos; also a brace of encores.
Perfection! The Liszt was not so brilliant as Reisenauer; but--again
within its frame--perfection! The Chopin was as Chopin would have had it
given in 1840. And there were refinements of tone-color undreamed of
even by Chopin. Paderewski is Paderewski--and Joseffy is perfection.
Paderewski is the most eclectic of the four pianists I have taken for my
text; Joseffy the most subtly poetic; D'Albert the most profound and
intellectually significant, and Pachmann--well, Vladimir is the _enfant
terrible_ of the quartet, a whimsical, fantastic charmer, an apparition
with rare talents, and an interpreter of the Lesser Chopin (always the
_great_ Chopin) without a peer. Let us be happy that we are vouchsafed
the pleasure of hearing four such artists.