Moszkowski.
November 18, 1898.
To those who already knew Mr. Moszkowski as a composer it must have been interesting yesterday to make his acquaintance as a pianist. His playing is the exact counterpart of his composing. It is brilliant, ingenious, elegant. It shows a knowledge of pianoforte technique so consummate that the listener is apt to be completely dazzled and to forget that our old friend the pianoforte is capable of other kinds of eloquence besides the eloquence of technical display. At the same time, it is not at all our intention to speak slightingly of Mr. Moszkowski's technical display. Though not the highest thing in music, technique is a very important thing, and, when carried to such a pitch of excellence, has a kind of self-sufficient beauty that may be compared to the lustre of pearls and diamonds. Perhaps it does not mean anything; but it is beautiful, cheering, enlivening. It raises the spirits somewhat like champagne, but better than champagne, and it has all the arrogance and costly unreason that are so fascinating in fine jewellery, in common with which it seems to convey a kind of magnificent protest against matter-of-fact and gloom. The wonderful charm of Mr. Moszkowski's composing and playing depends, further, on the fact that he attempts nothing but what he can do to perfection. He knows well enough that there was a Beethoven and a Brahms, for whom music was the expression of profound poetic ideas. But such ideas are not his affair. He leaves them frankly alone, in the well-founded confidence that almost anything in the way of an idea will serve his most entertaining purposes. The Concerto played yesterday is a perfectly characteristic work. Completely devoid of originality as to material, it is nevertheless put together with an unfailing sense of style, and everything is so adorned and so laid out for the solo instrument that there is not a dull moment from beginning to end. If only as a compendium of all the most telling musical effects that are absolutely peculiar to the pianoforte, the Concerto is likely to be remembered. The two Mazurkas that were played in the second part of the concert were interesting examples of that form which apparently no composers but those of Slavonic descent can handle successfully. It may be hoped that anyone who listened to them attentively will have grasped the rudimentary point that there is nothing in common between that clumsy dance of Western Europe called the Polka Mazurka and the elaborate figure dance the music of which has been so wonderfully idealised in the Mazurkas of Chopin, Tchaïkovsky, Wiéniawski, Moszkowski, and Scharwenka.