THE GRAND MANNER IN PIANOFORTE PLAYING
Here lies one whose name is writ on ivory! might be the epigraph of
every great pianist's life, and the ivory is about as perdurable
stuff as the water in which is written the epitaph of John Keats.
Despite cunning reproductive contrivances the executive musician has
no more chance of lasting fame than the actor. The career of both is
brief, but brilliant. Glory, then, is largely a question of memory,
and when the contemporaries of a tonal artist pass away then he has
no existence except in the biographical dictionaries. Creative, not
interpretative, art endures. Better be "immortal" while you are
alive, which wish may account for the number of young men who write
their memoirs while their cheeks are still virginal of beards, while
the pianist or violinist plays his autobiography, and this may be
some compensation for the eternal injustice manifested in matters
mundane.
Whosoever heard the lion-like velvet paws of Anton Rubinstein caress
the keyboard shall never forget the music. He is the greatest
pianist in my long and varied list. Think of his delivery of the
theme at the opening of Beethoven's G major concerto; or in that
last page of Chopin's Barcarolle. It was no longer the piano tone,
but the sound of distant waters and horns from elf-land. A mountain
of fire blown skyward, when the elemental in his profoundly
passionate temperament broke loose, he could roar betimes as gently
as a dove. Yet, when I last heard him in Paris, the few remaining
pupils of Chopin declared that he was brutal in his treatment of
their master. He played Rubinstein, not Chopin, said Georges Mathias
to me. Mathias knew, for he had heard the divine Frederic play.
Nevertheless, Rubinstein played Chopin, the greater and the
miniature, as no one before or since.
To each generation its music-making. The "grand manner" in
piano-playing has almost vanished. A few artists still live who
illustrate this manner; you may count them on the fingers of one
hand. Rosenthal, D'Albert, Carreno, Friedheim--Reisenaur had the
gift, too--how many others? Paderewski I heard play in Leipsic in
1912 at a Gewandhaus concert under the baton of the greatest living
conductor, Arthur Nikisch, and I can vouch for the plangent tone
quality and the poetic reading he displayed in his performance of
that old war-horse, the F minor concerto of Chopin. Furthermore, my
admiration of Paderewski's gift as a composer was considerably
increased after hearing his Polish symphony interpreted by Nikisch.
How far away we were from Manru. Joseffy, who looked upon
Paderewski, as a rare personality, told me that the Polish Fantasy
for piano and orchestra puzzled him because of its seeming
simplicity in figuration. "Only the composer," enthusiastically
exclaimed Joseffy, "could have made it so wonderful."
But the grand manner, has it become too artificial, too rhetorical?
It has gone out of fashion with the eloquence of the old histrions,
probably because of the rarity of its exponents; also because it no
longer appeals to a matter-of-fact public. Liszt was the first. He
was dithyrambic. He was a volcano; Thalberg--his one-time
rival--possessed all the smooth and icy perfections of Nesselrode
pudding. Liszt in reality never had but two rivals close to his
throne; Karl Tausig, the Pole, and Anton Rubinstein, the Russian.
Von Buelow was all intellect; his Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Brahms
were cerebral, not emotional. He had the temperament of the pedant.
I first heard him in Philadelphia in 1876 at the Academy of Music.
He introduced the Tschaikovsky B flat minor concerto, with B. J.
Lang directing the orchestra, a quite superfluous proceeding, as Von
Buelow gave the cues from the keyboard and distinctly cursed the
conductor, the band, the composition, and his own existence, as
befitted a disciple of Schopenhauer. Oh! he could be fiery enough,
though in his playing of the Romantics the fervent note was absent;
but his rhythmic attack was crisp and irresistible. You need only
recall the pungency of his reading of Beethoven's Scherzo in the
Sonata Opus 31, No. 3. It was staccato as a hail-storm. Two years
later, in Paris, I heard the same concerto played by Nicholas
Rubinstein at the Trocadero (Exposition, 1878), the very man who had
first flouted the work so rudely that Tschaikovsky, deeply offended,
changed the dedication to Von Buelow.
Anton Rubinstein displayed the grand manner. His style was a
compound of tiger's blood and honey. Notwithstanding the gossip
about his "false notes" (he wrote a Study on False Notes, as if in
derision), he was, with Tausig and Liszt, a supreme stylist. He was
not always in practice and most of the music he wrote for his
numerous tours was composed in haste and repented of at leisure. It
is now almost negligible. The D minor concerto reminds one of a
much-traversed railroad-station. But Rubinstein the virtuoso! It was
in 1873 I heard him, but I was too young to understand him. Fifteen
years later, or thereabouts, he gave his Seven Historical Recitals
in Paris and I attended the series, not once, but twice. He played
many composers, but for me he seemed to be playing the Book of Job,
the Apocalypse, and the Scarlet Sarafan. He had a ductile tone like
a golden French horn--Joseffy's comparison--and the power and
passion of the man have never been equalled. Neither Tausig nor
Liszt did I hear, worse luck, but there were plenty of witnesses to
tell me of the differences. Liszt, it seems, when at his best, was
both Rubinstein and Tausig combined, with Von Buelow thrown in. Anton
Rubinstein played every school with consummate skill, from the iron
certitudes of Bach's polyphony to the magic murmurs of Chopin and
the romantic rustling in the moonlit garden of Schumann. Beethoven,
too, he interpreted with intellectual and emotional vigour. Yet this
magnificent Calmuck--he wasn't of course, though he had Asiatic
features--grew weary of his instrument, as did Liszt, and fought the
stars in their courses by composing. But his name is writ in ivory,
and not in enduring music.
Scudo said that when Sigismund Thalberg played, his scales were like
perfectly strung pearls falling on scarlet velvet; with Liszt the
pearls had become red hot. This extravagant image is of value. We
have gone back to the Thalbergian pearls, for too much passion in
piano-playing is voted bad taste to-day. Nuance, then colour, and
ripe conception. Technique for technique's sake is no longer a
desideratum; furthermore, as Felix Leifels wittily remarked: "No one
plays the piano badly"; just as no one acts Hamlet disreputably. Mr.
Leifels, as a veteran contrabassist and at present manager of the
Philharmonic Society, ought to be an authority on the subject; the
old Philharmonic has had all the pianists, from H. C. Timm, in
1844--a Hummel concerto--to Thalberg and Rubinstein, Joseffy,
Paderewski, and Josef Hofmann. Truly the standard of virtuosity is
higher than it was a quarter of a century ago. Girls give recitals
with programmes that are staggering. The Chopin concertos now occupy
the position, technically speaking, of the Hummel and Mendelssohn
concertos. Every one plays Chopin as a matter of course, and, with a
few exceptions horribly. Yes, Mr. Leifels is right; no one plays the
piano badly, yet new Rubinsteins do not materialise.
The year of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876, was a
memorable one for visiting pianists. I heard not only Hans von
Buelow, but also two beautiful women, one at the apex of her artistic
career, Annette Essipoff (or Essipowa) and Teresa Carreno, just
starting on her triumphal road to fame. Essipowa was later the wife
of Leschetizky--maybe she was married then--and she was the most
poetic of all women pianists that I have heard. Clara Schumann was
as musical, but she was aged when I listened to her. Essipowa played
Chopin as only a Russian can. They are all Slavs, these Poles and
Russians, and no other nation, except the Hungarian, interpret
Chopin. Probably the greatest German virtuoso was Adolf Henselt,
Bavarian-born, though a resident of Petrograd. He had a Chopin-like
temperament and played that master's music so well that Schumann
called him the "German Chopin." Essipowa, I need hardly tell you,
communicated no little of her gracious charm to Paderewski. He
learned more from her plastic style than from all the precepts of
Leschetizky.
On a hot night in 1876, and in old Association Hall, I first saw and
heard Teresa (then Teresita) Carreno. I say "saw" advisedly, for she
was a blooming girl, and at the time shared the distinction with
Adelaide Neilson and Mrs. Scott-Siddons of being one of the three
most beautiful women on the stage. Carreno, still vital, still
handsome, and still the conquering artist, till her death last
spring, was in that far-away day fresh from Venezuela, a pupil of
Gottschalk and Anton Rubinstein. She wore a scarlet gown, as fiery
as her playing, and when I wish to recall her I close my eyes and
straightway as if in a scarlet mist I see her, hear her; for her
playing has always been scarlet to me, as Rubinstein's is golden,
and Joseffy's silvery.
The French group I have heard, beginning with Theodore Ritter, who
came to New York in company with Carlotta Patti; Plante--still
living and over eighty, so I have been told by M. Phillipp;
Saint-Saens, whom I first saw and heard at the Trocadero, Paris,
with his pupil, Montigny-Remaury; Clotilde Kleeberg, Diemer, Risler;
the venerable Georges Mathias, a pupil of Chopin; Raoul Pugno, who
was veritably a pugnacious pianist, Cecile Chaminade, Marie Jaell,
and her corpulent husband, Alfred Jaell.
Eugen d'Albert, surely the greatest of Scotch pianists--he was born
at Glasgow, though musically educated in London--is another
heaven-stormer. I heard him at Berlin some years ago, in
Philharmonic Hall, and people stood up in their excitement--Liszt
redivivus!
It was the grand manner in its most chaotic form. A musical volcano
belching up lava, scoriae, rocks, hunks of Beethoven--the
Appassionata Sonata it happened to be--while the infuriated little
Vulcan threw emotional fuel into his furnace. The unfortunate
instrument must have been a mass of splintered steel, wood, and wire
after the musical giant had finished. It was a magnificent
spectacle, and the music glorious. Eugen d'Albert, whether he is or
isn't the son of Karl Tausig--as Weimar gossip had it; Weimar, when
in the palmy days every other pianist you met was a natural son of
Liszt--or else pretended to be one--has more than a moiety of that
virtuoso's genius. He is a great artist, and occasionally the magic
fire flares and lights up the firmament of music.
I think it was in 1879 that Rafael Joseffy visited us for the first
time; but I didn't hear him till 1880. The reason I remember the
date is that this greatly beloved Hungarian made his debut at old
Chickering Hall (then at Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street); but I
saw him in Steinway Hall. Another magician with a peculiarly
personal style. In the beginning you thought of the aurora borealis,
shooting-stars, and exquisite meteors; a beautiful style, though not
a classic interpreter then. With the years Joseffy deepened and
broadened. The iridescent shimmer was never absent. No one played
the E minor Concerto of Chopin as did Joseffy. He had the tradition
from his beloved master, Tausig, as Tausig had it from Chopin by way
of Liszt. (Tausig always regretted that he had never heard Chopin
play.) Joseffy, in turn, transmitted the tradition to his early
pupil, Moriz Rosenthal, in whose repertoire it is the most
Chopinesque of all his performances.
And do you remember the Chevalier de Kontski, Carl Baermann, Franz
Rummel, S. B. Mills--who introduced here so many modern
concertos--the huge Norwegian Edmund Neupert, who lived at the Hotel
Liszt, next door to Steinway Hall, Constantin von Sternberg, and Max
Vogrich, the Hungarian with the Chopin-like profile?
In the same school as Joseffy is the capricious De Pachmann; with
Joseffy I sat at the first recital of this extraordinary Russian in
Chickering Hall (1890). Joseffy, with his accustomed generosity of
spirit--he was the most sympathetic and human of great virtuosi--at
once recognised the artistic worth of Vladimir de Pachmann. This
last representative of a school that included the names of Hummel,
Cramer, Field, Thalberg, Chopin, the little De Pachmann (he was then
bearded like a pirate) captivated us. It was all miniature, without
passion or pathos or the grand manner, but in its genre his playing
was perfection; the polished perfection of an intricately carved
ivory ornament. De Pachmann played certain sides of Chopin
incomparably; capriciously, even perversely. In a small hall,
sitting on a chair that precisely suited his fidgety spirit, then,
if in the mood, a recital by him was something unforgettable.
After De Pachmann--Paderewski. Paderewski, the master-colourist, the
grand visionary, whose art is often strained, morbid, fantastic. And
after Paderewski? Why, Leopold Godowsky, of course. He belongs to
the Joseffy-De Pachmann, not to the Rubinstein-Josef Hofmann, group.
I once called him the superman of piano-playing. Nothing like him,
as far as I know, is to be found in the history of piano-playing
since Chopin. He is an apparition. A Chopin doubled by a
contrapuntalist. Bach and Chopin. The spirit of the German cantor
and the Polish tone-poet in curious conjunction. His playing is
transcendental; his piano compositions the transcendentalism of the
future. That way, else retrogression! All has been accomplished in
ideas and figuration. A new synthesis--the combination of seemingly
disparate elements and styles--with innumerable permutations, he has
accomplished. He is a miracle-worker. The Violet Ray. Dramatic
passion, flame, and fury are not present; they would be intruders on
his map of music. The piano tone is always legitimate, never forced.
But every other attribute he boasts. His ten digits are ten
independent voices recreating the ancient polyphonic art of the
Flemings. He is like a Brahma at the piano. Before his serene and
all-embracing vision every school appears and disappears in the
void. The beauty of his touch and tone are only matched by the
delicate adjustment of his phrasing to the larger curve of the
composition. Nothing musical is foreign to him. He is a pianist for
pianists, and I am glad to say that the majority of them gladly
recognise this fact.
One evening Godowsky was playing his piano sonata with its subtle
intimations of Brahms, Chopin, and Liszt, and its altogether
Godowskian colour and rhythmic life--he is the greatest creator of
rhythmic values since Liszt, and that is a "large order"--when he
was interrupted by the entrance of Josef Hofmann. Godowsky and
Hofmann are as inseparable as were Chopin and Liszt. Heine called
the latter pair the Dioscurii of music. In the Godowsky apartment
stood several concert grands. Hofmann nonchalantly removed his coat
and, making an apology for disturbing us, he went into another room
and soon we heard him slowly practising. What do you suppose? Some
new concerto with new-fangled bedevilments? O Sancta Simplicitas!
This giant, if ever there was one, played at a funereal tempo the
octave passages in the left hand of the Heroic Polonaise of Chopin
(Opus 53). Every schoolgirl rattles them off as "easy," but, with
the humility of a great artist, Hofmann practised the section as if
it were still a stumbling-block. De Lenz records that Tausig did the
same.
Later, Conductor Artur Bodanzky of the Metropolitan Opera dropped
in, and several pianists and critics followed, and soon the Polish
pianist was playing for us all some well-known compositions by a
certain Dvorsky; also an extremely brilliant and effective concert
study in C minor by Constantin von Sternberg. From 1888, when he was
a wonder-child here, Jozio Hofmann's artistic development has been
logical and continuous. His mellow muscularity evokes Rubinstein. No
one plays Rubinstein as does this Harmonious Blacksmith--and with
the piety of Rubinstein's pet pupil. I once compared him to a
steam-hammer, whose marvellous sensitivity enables it to crack an
egg-shell or crush iron. Hofmann's range of tonal dynamics is
unequalled, even in this age of perfected piano technique. He is at
home in all schools, and his knowledge is enormous. At moments his
touch is as rich as a Kneisel Quartet accord.
At the famous Rudolph Schirmer dinner, given in 1915, among other
distinguished guests there were nearly a score of piano virtuosi.
The newspapers humorously commented upon the fact that there was
not a squabble, though with so many nationalities one row, at
least, might have been expected. As a matter of fact, if any
discussion had arisen it would not have been over politics, but
about the fingering of the Double-Note Study in G sharp minor of
Chopin, so difficult to play slowly--the most formidable of
argument-breeding questions among pianists. A parterre of pianists,
indeed, some in New York because of the war, while Paderewski and
Rosenthal were conspicuous by their absence. Think of a few names:
Joseffy--he died several months later, Gabrilowitsch, Hofmann,
Godowsky, Carl Friedberg, Mark Hambourg--a heaven-stormer in the
Rubinstein-Hercules manner--Leonard Borwick, Alexander Lambert,
Ernest Schelling, Stojowski, Percy Grainger--the young Siegfried of
the Antipodes--August Fraemcke, Cornelius Ruebner, and--another
apparition in the world of piano-playing--Ferruccio Busoni.
This Italian, the greatest of Italian piano virtuosi--the history of
which can claim such names as Domenico Scarlatti, Clementi,
Fumigalli, Martucci, Sgambati--is also a composer who has set agog
conservative critics by the boldness of his imagination. As an
artist he may be said to embody the intellectuality of Von Buelow,
the technical brilliancy of the Liszt group. Busoni is eminently a
musical thinker.
America probably will never again harbour such a constellation of
piano talent. I sometimes wonder if the vanished generation of piano
artists played much better than those men. Godowsky, Hofmann, the
lyric and most musical Harold Bauer; the many-sided, richly endowed,
and charming Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Hambourg, Busoni, and Paderewski
are not often matched. Heine called Thalberg a king, Liszt a
prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel
(not a negro minstrel, for a chalk-burner is necessarily white),
Mme. Pleyel a sibyl, and Doehler--a pianist! The contemporary piano
hierarchy might be thus classed: Josef Hofmann, a king; Paderewski,
a poet; Godowsky, a prophet; Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, a sibyl;
D'Albert, a titan; Busoni, a philosopher; Rosenthal, a hero, and
Alexander Lambert--a pianist. Well, Mr. Lambert may be congratulated
on such an ascription; Doehler was a great technician in his day,
and when the "friend of pianists" (Lambert could pattern after
Schindler, whose visiting-card read: "l'Ami de Beethoven") masters
his modesty an admirable piano virtuoso is revealed. So let him be
satisfied with the honourable appellation of "pianist." He is in
good company.
And the ladies! I am sorry I can't say, "place aux dames!" Space
forbids. I've heard them all, from Arabella Goddard to Mme.
Montigny-Remaury (in Paris, 1878, with her master, Camille
Saint-Saens); from Alide Topp, Marie Krebs, Anna Mehlig, Pauline
Fichtner, Vera Timinoff, Ingeborg Bronsart, Madeline Schiller, to
Julia Rive-King; from Cecilia Gaul and Svarvady-Clauss to Anna
Bock; from the Amazon, Sofie Menter, the most masculine of Liszt
players, to Adele Margulies, Yoland Maero, and Antoinette
Szumowska-Adamowska; from Ilonka von Ravacsz to Ethel Leginska--who
plays like a house afire; from Helen Hopekirk to Katharine Goodson;
from Clara Schumann to Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, Olga Samaroff, and
the newly come Brazilian Guiomar Novaes--the list might be unduly
prolonged.
I heard Paderewski play last spring. Surely he has now the "grand
manner" in all its dramatic splendour, and without its old-fashioned
pretentious rhetoric. Nor has he lost the lusciousness of his
touch--a Caruso voice on the keyboard--or the poetic intensity of
his Chopin and Schumann interpretations. He is still Prince
Charming.
Not only do I fear prolixity, but the confusing of critical values,
for I write from memory, and I admit that I've had more pleasure
from the "intimate" pianists than from the forgers of tonal
thunderbolts; that is--Rubinstein excepted--from such masters in
miniature as Joseffy, Godowsky, Carl Heyman, De Pachmann, and
Paderewski. I find in the fresh, sparkling playing of Mischa
Levitski, Benno Moiseivich, and Guiomar Novaes high promise for
their future. The latter came here unheralded and as the pupil of
that sterling virtuoso and pedagogue, Isidor Phillipp of the Paris
Conservatory.
It is noteworthy that only Chopin, Liszt, and Von Buelow were
Christian born among the supreme masters of the keyboard; the rest
(with a few exceptions) were and are members of that race whose
religious tenets specifically incline them to the love and practice
of music.