A YEAR or two ago a young lady came to my studio and asked for a single lesson. She told me that she had been studying in Germany for some years, and named the city, which is one of the well-known musical centers. She was then going to the West on her way home, and stopped a day over in New York expressly for a lesson from me. I heard her play several pieces, and was surprised and pleased with her manner and style. She phrased with intelligence and gave due attention to rhythmic requirements. Her tone was large, full, and musically resonant, and could not have been produced otherwise than through the agency of the upper-arm muscles, which were constantly in active use. The flexibility and elasticity of hands and wrists were also apparent, and finally the evident repose in action of all of these qualities capped the climax. I said to her: "My dear young lady, I cannot add to your playing, for it is already finished and artistic. I might possibly suggest a different rendering in certain parts, but, after all, this would amount only to a matter of taste. If you had studied exclusively under my guidance for a course of years, and I had succeeded in doing my best, aided by your own intelligence and careful practice, I should have sought to bring about just the result which you have reached. I think your teacher must be a young man." "He is," she replied; "but why?" "Because," I answered, "his method is free from the stiffness and rigidity of the old German school. Has he, perhaps, a method of his own?" Her immediate reply was, "He uses your method." She also told me her teacher's name, which I have now unfortunately forgotten. I think this teacher deserves to have more pupils!
But the time has gone by when it was necessary for students of the piano to go abroad to complete a musical education. There are now teachers of the piano of the first rank in all of our principal cities, who secure better results with American pupils than foreign teachers do, because they have a better understanding of our national character and temperament. Such men among my own former pupils are E. M. Bowman in New York, S. S. Sanford in New Haven, W. S. B. Matthews and William H. Sherwood in Chicago, and many others who are distinguished in their profession as teachers, and who have done and are doing much in furtherance of sound musical education and in the cultivation of a refined, musical taste in America. Our country has also produced composers of the first rank, and the names MacDowell, Parker, Kelley, Whiting, Paine, Buck, Shelley, Chadwick, Brockway, and Foote occur at once to the mind. Enormous progress in the art and science of music has been made in America since I began my studies in Germany in the year 1849. Our teachers meet in great numbers in convention during the summer months and in summer schools and classes, and it is difficult to overestimate the beneficent results which flow from these assemblies. They create a musical atmosphere, in which teachers and pupils live and move and have their being. They afford opportunities for the intelligent discussion of mooted questions and for the interchange of ideas, and lead to a wider dissemination of the best educational methods.
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton all have their chairs of music, and doubtless this is true of others of our universities and colleges. The city of New York has become one of the great musical centers of the world. The Philharmonic Society, the opera season, the Kneisel Quartet, and many others of high artistic merit, afford opportunities for the gratification of musical taste which are hardly to be excelled elsewhere; and the popularity of these and of the countless pianoforte recitals and chamber-music concerts bears eloquent testimony to the growth of an intelligent musical taste among us. Boston and Chicago have their world-renowned orchestras, led by Gericke and Thomas, who are passed masters of their art. The cities of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis have their orchestras, each under competent leadership. The most celebrated artists at home and from abroad are heard in our principal cities. The season just closed (1900-01) is in striking contrast to those of my early manhood. Among the many prominent pianists who have played to us there are some of extraordinary talent, who give abundant promise of brilliant future achievement.
Ernst von DohnÁnyi, born at Pressburg, July 27, 1877, is a wonderfully talented musical composer and at the same time a pianist whose technic is complete, combining as it does the emotional, intelligent, and mechanical elements in happy union and adjustment. Von DohnÁnyi has by nature as intense, thorough, and complete a musical organization as ever came within my experience. He composes with marvelous spontaneity and rapidity. His ideas are fresh and original, and their expression and elaboration are effected with the freedom of an improvisation, thus in no way emphasizing their mechanical setting forth.
He is just completing, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, an elaborate symphony in D minor for grand orchestra, the scheme of which is as follows: I. Allegro; II. Adagio; III. Scherzo; IV. Intermezzo; V. Finale: Introduction, Tema con Variazioni; Fuga.
This is a massive production, apparently the result of inherent qualities carried into act by impulse, in other words, of spontaneous achievement. It is so instinctive and impulsive that the art of its construction hardly occurs to the hearer at first, but as an afterthought excites wonder and admiration.
Early in March of the present year (1901), Von DohnÁnyi, his wife, and a few other friends, among them Emil Pauer, dined at my house, and during the evening Von DohnÁnyi played his symphony on the pianoforte. This instrument is naturally quite inadequate to the interpretation of such a work, but Von DohnÁnyi's technic is so complete, his tone so massive while intensely musical, and his enthusiasm so contagious that we became conscious of an ever-increasing interest, steadily growing in intensity. The occasion and its experience will not be forgotten by any of those present.
A week later the Von DohnÁnyis spent the evening with us just before their departure on the following day for Europe, and he played again a portion of the work, deepening and confirming the impression made at the first hearing. The future of this young man is full of promise. His teacher in composition was Hans Koessler in Pesth; his pianoforte teacher was Stephen ThomÁn of the same city. Later on he had eight lessons of Eugen d'Albert in Berlin, after which the latter said to him: "You can go on by yourself now; I have taught you all I can."
Leopold Godowsky is a pianist of the first class, but above all he is a specialist, and altogether unapproachable in his specialty. His left hand is in every respect the equal of his right, and passages of extreme intricacy and rapidity come out with an astonishing clearness of detail. Nothing in his work, however minute, is slighted, but musical expression and finish of execution are above criticism. His specialty is his rearrangement and working up of many of Chopin's Études in such manner that several of the various themes of these are, so to speak, intertwined. In some instances three different melodies can be heard progressing simultaneously in loving union, with a smoothness, delicacy, and accuracy in counterpoint which is simply marvelous. There is never a suspicion of haste in his playing, no matter how rapid the rate of speed. His manner is full of repose—respectful, earnest, and sympathetic; thus there is no suggestion of violence to the composer's original production.
I know that among my best friends, whose judgment I esteem, there are some who do not hold the same opinion, and who think that the composer's work should be left intact. It seems to me, however, that much depends upon the manner of treatment. The French proverb runs: "Il y a fagots et fagots"; or, in the more homely phrase of dear old Boston, "There are beans, and then there are beans." Moreover, the fact that these compositions are Études (studies), and therefore avowedly for the purpose of developing physical technic as well as poetic style, should be duly considered in judging of their raison d'Étre. Similar treatment of the sonatas, ballades, and nocturnes would surely be a different thing. Furthermore, the solid and dignified Brahms—one of the three B's of BÜlow's trinity—set an example, by rearranging a rondo by Von Weber, which he turns upside down, so to speak, making a bass of what in the original is the right-hand part. Brahms has also utterly destroyed the charm of Chopin's "Étude in F Minor, Op. 25, No. 2," which lies in the very rapid and delicately pianissimo playing of passages of triplets in the right hand as against duals in the left. In the original these passages are throughout of single tones in both hands, and hence can be performed in the most dainty and fascinating manner; but Brahms has changed the right hand part to double thirds and; sixths, thus completely altering the character of the music, and doing violence to the exquisitely light, delicate, and graceful effect of the original version. In passing judgment upon the work of Brahms, however, it must not be forgotten that he publishes this in company with several other arrangements, under the general title, "Studien fÜr das Pianoforte," thus indicating that his object is the development of physical technic.
In this connection, I remember Rubinstein's telling me as long ago as 1873, in the artists' retiring-room during one of his recitals at Steinway Hall, that he used in his boyhood's days "to do all sorts of things with Chopin's Études," as he expressed it, "in order to exercise and strengthen the fingers." By way of illustration, he went to an upright piano which happened to be in the room, and began playing with his left hand alone the right-hand part of the chromatic-scale Étude; "Op. 10, No. 2," and this he did with fluency.
Godowsky has played his arrangements to me on several occasions at my studio and at home en famille, and has invariably produced a state of happy good humor which was of long duration and which in large measure returns to me as I write.
April 20, 1901. Yesterday evening I attended the farewell concert of Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the talented young Russian pianist. He was at his best, and proved his right to stand in the front rank of modern pianists. His playing throughout of a program of compositions of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Liszt was masterly, combining as it did genuine musical quality, intelligence in phrasing, and great brilliancy, as well as poetry in interpretation. He is yet a young man and has not reached the full climax of his power, and will doubtless show still further development in the next few years. Other pianists who have played in New York during the season of 1900-01, and who deserve to be classed with the highest, are Harold Bauer, who has deservedly won a very high reputation through his splendid ability in all styles of piano music, and Arthur Friedheim, whose recent concert was brilliant in high degree, and who on that occasion gave an interpretation of Liszt's great "Sonata in B Minor" which it seems to me was not surpassed by the master himself—and I have heard Liszt play this work many times. Richard Burmeister also gave a masterly interpretation of this same sonata earlier in the season. This is the sonata, by the way, of which mention has been made, in the earlier part of these "Memories," as having been played by Liszt on the occasion of the first visit of Brahms to Liszt, in the year 1853.
We have also had Teresa CarreÑo, Adele aus der Ohe, and Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, all of them of the first rank and established reputation. Of these the first-named is a friend of long standing, for my first acquaintance with her dates back to the early sixties, when she first came to New York as a child prodigy. I well remember the impression she made upon me at that time, both from her artistic playing and her charming appearance in short dresses and "pantalets," the fashion for children of that day. A friendship was immediately begun and established, which still continues.
Josef Hofmann, with his tremendous technic and executive skill, has given pleasure to many; and Arthur Whiting, Howard Brockway, and Henry Holden Huss have ably upheld the reputation of American virtuosos and composers.
In bringing these papers to a close, I desire to make my grateful acknowledgment to the friends and pupils of many years who united in celebrating the seventieth anniversary of my birth by presenting me with a beautiful silver loving-cup, which I fondly cherish as an evidence of affectionate regard, and which will be ever filled and overflowing with loving memories, not alone of those who united in the gift, but of the many others whom I have known in the course of an unusually long professional career. To one and all I offer my heartfelt thanks.
