Theodor Leschetizky was born in Poland at the Castle of Lancut, near Lemberg, June 22, 1830. His father, a Bohemian by birth, held the position of music-master to the family of Potocka. His mother, Theresa von Ullmann, was a Pole.

The Potocki had luxurious tastes. They were cultivated people, who cared for beautiful things, and were rich enough to have them. The Castle itself, a fine old building, stood in the middle of a large park, surrounded by trees and plenty of open land; it contained a picture-gallery and a private theatre. This was the home in which Leschetizky passed his childhood, seeing life as a delightful thing, full of grace and ease, which might have been quite perfect had there been no music lessons. But at the age of five he began to learn the piano, and had to study two hours a day from the beginning. He loved music intensely, and might even have loved practising; but his father, according to the parental custom of the day, was so extremely severe that the lessons were a misery to both, and, but for his mother's gentle help, might have ended in his hating the instrument altogether.

In spite of such troubles, his progress was extraordinary. In four years he was ready to play in public, and made his first appearance at an orchestral concert in Lemberg. He played a Concertino of Czerny, and created a considerable sensation; "but," he says, "I cannot remember very much about the music, because at the time my mind was entirely taken up with the rats." Concerts were given so rarely in those days that any place was considered fit to play in. Leschetizky's first concert-room—probably a little more primitive than most—was built of wood; the light came in through the cracks, and the floor was full of holes, through which climbed the aforesaid rats in hundreds, running about fearlessly, not only during rehearsal, but at the concert itself.

After this exciting dÉbut Leschetizky went about playing everywhere, and very quickly became famous as a "wonder-child." Everybody talked about him and wanted to hear him; great ladies borrowed him for their salons when they could, and fÊted and spoilt him, as great ladies always do—all of which he enjoyed as much as they did.

When he was ten, his father, pensioned by the Potocka, took his family to live in Vienna, where they were already accustomed to spend the winter. Joseph Leschetizky's post in the Potocka household had given him the opportunity of meeting all the great artists of the time who frequented their salon; and in this way Theodore had been able to hear the best music from his earliest boyhood. For a year the boy continued to study at home with his father, after which he went to the great Czerny, whose school was so famous in those days, and to which many of the greatest artists, such as Liszt, Thalberg, DÖhler, Kullak, and Hiller, had belonged.

Himself a fine pianist, Czerny had been a pupil of Clementi and an intimate friend and pupil of Beethoven; "a fact of which he was very proud," says Leschetizky. "So often, indeed, did he speak of him to me that I always felt as if I had known him myself." In the same indirect way he became spiritually acquainted with Chopin, whose pupil Filtsch was his great friend. A little older than Leschetizky, Filtsch was already a beautiful player, whom Chopin loved, of whom he thought highly, and who would assuredly have become famous had he lived. Leschetizky's readings of the lighter compositions of Chopin are for the most part inspired by the remembrance of what he assimilated from this gifted boy, and he has changed his rendering very little since those days. Czerny cared little for Chopin, either as pianist or composer, nor did he willingly teach his music. His mind was too limited to understand subtlety, and he felt for it the contempt the plain man always feels for what he cannot grasp.

At fourteen Leschetizky began to take pupils himself, and seems to have been a prodigy in teaching as well as in playing, for he had soon so much to do that his time was quite filled up. His father took two rooms for him next door, so that he might carry on his musical work without disturbing the household. He was very busy, for, besides the teaching and his own practice, there were lessons from Sechter in counterpoint and, until his voice broke, he sang in a church choir two or three times a week. He played everywhere. He was known in Metternich's salon, to Thalberg, to the great Liszt, whom he worshipped, to the Court, to Donizetti, who encouraged his early attempts at composition, in fact to all the great artists who passed through Vienna.

It was at this time that he heard Schulhoff play one evening at Dessauer's house. It was a new experience. Hitherto he had heard nothing like it. To phenomenal technique he was quite accustomed—fireworks could no longer disturb his equanimity—but the poetry, exquisite finish and simplicity of Schulhoff's playing touched something within him that till then had lain dormant, and he recognised at once the incompleteness of his own work.

Schulhoff, though not a pupil of Chopin, knew him well in Paris, and had caught something of his manner; yet it was not this—already familiar to Leschetizky through Filtsch—but his marvellous power of making the piano "sing" that brought to the boy the vision of a new world. The public did not understand Schulhoff at first. They rather despised this pianist, who played to them in a perfectly simple way. They missed their runs and trills and surging octave passages, and found him dull. Not so Leschetizky. Here was a pianist who had gone further, and attained to something higher than the rest. He too must reach the same plane. For months he worked, refusing to play in public till he had gained what he had been searching for, and when he emerged from his exile, not only his playing, but his point of view had entirely altered.

Up to this time, in spite of Filtsch's influence, he had, like others, been satisfied that "the perfect finger" was the desirable thing; now he recognised a finer ideal. The change in him was to be of farther reaching influence than he dreamt of at the time, for it filtered through him to his pupils and created in them the germ of what developed later into the famous Leschetizky School. Schulhoff's visit marked an epoch in Leschetizky's life.

In the same year he took a course in law at the University; and this together with his pupils kept him so busy that he was obliged to read hard into the early morning hours to get through the double work.

When the Revolution of 1848 came—putting an end to all music in the city for the time being—he was ready for a holiday. Having also hurt his arm in a duel, therefore unable to practise, he decided to take this opportunity of seeing something of the world. He did not see much of it, for he went to Italy, and promptly fell so deeply in love with everything—and everybody—there, that he had to be removed from the source of danger; and a faithful friend hastily took him back to the Austrian mountains and kept him there, till both his mind and his city were calm enough to permit a safe return to ordinary life.

For four years he worked away steadily at his teaching, playing much besides, and leading the gay social life his genial nature loved. He also composed his first opera, "Die Bruder von San Marco." Meyerbeer, to whom he played it, thought it showed great promise, and urged him to finish it, but this he never cared to do, and the work still remains as he left it then.

In 1852 Leschetizky decided to go to Russia, and set out in September of that year.

His dÉbut at the Michael Theatre in St. Petersburg resulted in a small circle of pupils, which very soon grew into a large one. His fame as a pianist had already preceded him, and shortly after his arrival he was commanded to play before Nicholas I.

He tells of the magnificent carriage sent to convey him to the palace, of the sumptuous apartment and dainty supper to greet him when he got there and, alas, of the intolerable piano, upon which he flatly refused to play, and went home instead. Expecting to be ordered out of Russia, a little later on he received to his surprise a second invitation, accompanied this time by no beautiful carriage, and graced by only a very meagre supper served in a miserable little bedroom. But the piano was all he could wish, and he played on it so much to their Majesties' satisfaction that, his sins forgiven, bedtime discovered him once more in the gorgeous apartment of his first visit.

He was very happy in his Russian life. He had many friends, and among them Anton Rubinstein. As boys they had played together in Vienna, now as young men they were to work together in St. Petersburg. Rubinstein was concert-master at the Court of the Grand Duchess Helen, the sister of the Emperor Nicholas. Soon after Leschetizky came to Russia, Rubinstein wishing to go on tour, asked him to take his place until his return. Leschetizky agreed to do so, on the understanding that he could live in his own rooms instead of staying in the palace, and be allowed to go on with his private teaching at home. Life would have been intolerable to him had his freedom been curtailed. His duties were to arrange all the music at Court, to give singing lessons to the daughter of the Grand Duchess, and to one of her Maids of Honour—Madlle. de Fridebourg, who possessed one of the most beautiful voices he had ever heard. In 1856 he married this lady. Sixteen years later they were divorced.

Leschetizky's connection with the Grand Duchess brought him into touch with all the great artists who visited St. Petersburg. The Grand Duchess Helen was a remarkable woman, who exercised considerable influence over the political affairs of Russia and made her palace the centre of culture in the capital. Of wide sympathies and unusual intellectual gifts, she was fitted to be the leader of any sphere she might choose to rule. Men and women from all parts of Europe—military, diplomatic, artistic—visited her salon. She it was who started the Russian Imperial Musical Society which, under Rubinstein's directorship, eventually founded the Conservatoire; and it was in a large measure owing to her influence that Rubinstein, Kologrivov, and others were able to carry out their schemes for educating the people to a knowledge of good music.

St. Petersburg was very far behind the rest of Europe in regard to the status of the musical profession when Leschetizky first went there. It was not regarded as an honourable career at all, nor even as a serious study. The rich patronised it because it was fashionable; the bargeman on the river chanted his song as he went because he loved it; but its cultivation as an art was in no sense a conscious necessity of Russian life.

Outside aristocratic circles there was little or no music, scarcely any one who thought it worth while to make it his life-work. No one knew anything about the generation of young native composers then growing up. Even Glinka's popularity had waned, and Dargomijsky and Balakirev were hardly more than names. The orchestra of the Symphony Concerts—given but two or three times in the year by the Court Chapel—was made up of students, clerks, or any one who could play, and liked to spend his leisure in that way. Till 1850, when Rubinstein inaugurated the Sunday Concerts, there were no public orchestral performances outside the Court at all; and even twelve years later, when the Conservatoire was started, musical life was but just awakening, and a little knowledge of the art spreading through the city. The ignorance of people in general was incredible. Leschetizky tells an amusing story to illustrate this.

One day a rich tradesman came to one of his musical friends to ask what his terms would be for giving pianoforte lessons to his daughter. He named his price. "Well," said the tradesman, "that certainly is expensive—but does it include the black keys as well as the white?"

In a comparatively short time the condition of musical affairs improved immensely, for the people at once took advantage of the opportunity to hear and learn, and Leschetizky's popularity as a teacher increased so rapidly that very soon it became impossible for him to take all the pupils himself, and he found it necessary to train some of them to work under him as assistants.

In 1862, when the St. Petersburg Conservatoire was opened with Anton Rubinstein as director, Leschetizky transferred his class there. Though among the pioneers who actively interested themselves in its development as a means of popularising the study of music, Leschetizky was more taken up with pupils in particular than pupils in general. He sympathised to a certain extent with Rubinstein's plans for the improvement of the musical condition of the country; at the same time his nature, more individualist and less philanthropic than his friend's, preferred to work in a smaller field. He could devote himself heart and soul to watching and tending the unfolding of any young talent, but not to the education of the masses; and it is well that it was so, for otherwise a specialist would have been lost to the world. His chief care was that each pupil entrusted to him should develop to the best of his ability; if pianism in general incidentally benefited by the system of study he had built up, so much the better.