Ysaye and Busoni.
February 6, 1902.
If another and older master of the violin is commonly described—as it were, emeritus—as greatest living violinist, it is unquestionably to Mr. Ysaye that the title belongs in its full sense. Unparalleled warmth, richness, and bouquet of tone, added to sovereign mastery of technique and a marvellous temperament, full of fiery energy and yet apparently incapable of exaggeration—such are the most obvious qualities of Mr. Ysaye's art. He is not a genuine classic, like Joachim. Bach and Beethoven he plays in virtue of infallible artistic savoir vivre; but he is obviously in fuller sympathy with a Sonata or Concerto by Saint-Saëns, a Suite by Vieuxtemps, or a Fantasia by Wiéniawski. Yet that artistic savoir vivre is so complete that it is nearly always impossible to find specific fault with his renderings of the classics. This was the case yesterday in the Bach Sonata, which headed the programme. Each of the four movements declared the mastery of the string player, no less than of the pianist, Mr. Busoni—real kindred spirits of Bach and Beethoven. The Vieuxtemps Suite, too, was given with such beauty of tone that the superficiality of the composition was entirely disguised, the slow movement sounding almost as though Bach had written it. In the concluding sonata—a late work by Saint-Saëns—it is scarcely necessary to say that the violin-playing was perfect. Perhaps some of the listeners remembered a performance by the same violinist of Saint-Saëns's Third Concerto at a Hallé Concert not long ago. Again yesterday we were treated to such playing as bewilders the senses and seemed to place the transcendental cleverness of the French composer on a level with the real imaginative power of greater men. Mr. Ysaye was extremely well disposed—in fact, quite at his best—and was rapturously applauded. As an extra piece he gave Beethoven's Romance in G, the rendering being above criticism.
Utterly dissimilar as Messrs. Ysaye and Busoni are in temperament and artistic character, they meet as master musicians, and the association is in the highest degree interesting. The one is all sense and the other all spirit, and one feels that only the immensely high accomplishment of both makes the association possible. Mr. Busoni's solo was that most capricious and austere Sonata, Beethoven's 109th work. It was all incomparably well rendered, and the Variations in the last movement, which ultimately spin themselves into a kind of Fantasia, were a prodigious revelation of technical power. It is long since such a pianoforte performance has been heard in this city—a performance stamped by austere beauty and lofty ideality, and free from all earthly elements. What other pianist at the present day, we venture to ask, could give us such a thing?