He asked me what my chief difficulty was, whereupon I answered "the technique, of course." He smiled, and said "that was the smallest difficulty, and that anybody could master execution if they knew how to attack it, unless there was some want of proper development of the hand." I said I had studied very hard, but that I hadn't mastered it, and that there was always some hard place in every piece which I couldn't get the better of. He said he was sure he could remedy the deficiency, and that if I would show him my hand without a glove, he could tell directly what I was capable of. I wouldn't pull it off, however, because I was afraid he might find some radical defect or weakness in it, but I was so charmed with the way he made light of the technique, and with the absolute certainty he seemed to have that I could overcome it, that I promised him that I would go and play to him the following Wednesday.
Accordingly on the following Wednesday I presented myself. I had expected to stay about half an hour, but I ended by staying three solid hours, and we talked as fast as we could all the while, too! So you may imagine we had a good deal to say. He lives in two little rooms on the Königgrätzer Strasse, only four doors from the W.'s, where I boarded for so long. Now if I had only known I was close to such a teacher! We must often have passed each other in the street, and where was my good angel that he did not touch my arm and say, "There's the man for you?"—Frightful to think how near one may be to one's best happiness, or even salvation, and not know it!
Deppe's front room was pretty much filled up with a grand piano, which, as well as the chairs and most other articles of furniture, was covered with music. I glanced over the pieces a little, and there was nearly every set of Etudes under the sun, it seemed to me, as well as concertos and pieces by all the great composers, fingered and marked with pencil in the most minute way. It was enough simply to turn the leaves, to see what a study he must have made of everything he gave his scholars. His inner room had double doors to it to prevent the sound from penetrating. I rapped at the outside one, and presently I heard a great turning and rattling of keys, and then they opened, and Deppe was before me. He put out his hand in the most cordial and friendly way, and greeted me with the most winning smile in the world. I took off my things and began to play to him. He listened quietly, and without interrupting me. When I had finished he told me that my difficulties were principally mechanical ones—that I had conception and style, but that my execution was uneven and hurried, my wrist stiff, the third and fourth fingers[F] very weak, the tone not full and round enough, that I did not know how to use the pedal, and finally, that I was too nervous and flurried.
"If possible, you must get over this agitation," said he. "Hören Sie Sich spielen (Listen to your own playing). You have talent enough to get over all your difficulties if you will be patient, and do just as I tell you." "I will do anything," I said. "Very good. But I warn you that you will have to give up all playing for the present except what I give you to study, and those things you must play very slowly."
This was a pleasant prospect, as I was just preparing to give a concert in Berlin, under Kullak's auspices, and had already got my programme half learned! But I had "invoked the demon," and I felt bound to give the required pledge.—So here I am, after four years abroad with the "greatest masters," going back to first principles, and beginning with five-finger exercises! I had never been given any particular rule for holding my hand, further than the general one of curving the fingers and lifting them very high. Deppe objects to this extreme lifting of the fingers. He says it makes a knick in the muscle, and you get all the strength simply from the finger, whereas, when you lift the finger moderately high, the muscle from the whole arm comes to bear upon it. The tone, too, is entirely different. Lifting the finger so very high, and striking with force, stiffens the wrist, and produces a slight jar in the hand which cuts off the singing quality of the tone, like closing the mouth suddenly in singing. It produces the effect of a blow upon the key, and the tone is more a sharp, quick tone; whereas, by letting the finger just fall—it is fuller, less loud, but more penetrating. I suppose the hammer falls back more slowly from the string, and that makes the tone sing longer.
Don't you remember my saying that Liszt had such an extraordinary way of playing a melody? That it did not seem to be so loud and cut-out as most artists make it, and yet it was so penetrating? Well, dear, there was the secret of it! "Spielen Sie mit dem Gewicht (Play with weight)," Deppe will say. "Don't strike, but let the fingers fall. At first the tone will be nearly inaudible, but with practice it will gain every day in power."—After Deppe had directed my attention to it, I remembered that I had never seen Liszt lift up his fingers so fearfully high as the other schools, and especially the Stuttgardt one, make such a point of doing.[G] That is where Mehlig misses it, and is what makes her playing so sharp and cornered at times. When you lift the fingers so high you cannot bind the tones so perfectly together. There is always a break. Deppe makes me listen to every tone, and carry it over to the next one, and not let any one finger get an undue prominence over the other—a thing that is immensely difficult to do—so I have given up all pieces for the present, and just devote myself to playing these little exercises right.
Deppe not only insists upon the fingers being as curved as possible, so that you play exactly on the tips of them, but he turns the hand very much out, so as to make the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers higher than those of the first and second, and as he does not permit you to throw out the elbow in doing this, the turn must be made from the wrist. The thumb must also be slightly curved, and quite free from the hand. Many persons impede their execution by not keeping the thumb independent enough of the rest of the hand. The moment it contracts, the hand is enfeebled. The object of turning the hand outward is to favour the third and fourth fingers, and give them a higher fall when they are lifted. This strengthens them very much. It also looks much prettier when the outer edge of the hand is high, and one of Deppe's grand mottoes is, "When it looks pretty then it is right."
After Deppe had put me through five-finger exercises on the foregoing principles, and taught me to lift each finger and let it fall with a perfectly loose wrist, (a most deceitful point, by the way, for it took me a long while to distinguish when I was stiffening the wrist involuntarily and when I wasn't,) he proceeded to the scale. He always begins with the one in E major as the most useful to practice. His principle in playing the scale is not to turn the thumb under! but to turn a little on each finger end, pressing it firmly down on the key, and screwing it round, as it were, on a pivot, till the next finger is brought over its own key. In this way he prepares for the thumb, which is kept free from the hand and slightly curved.—He told me to play the scale of E major slowly with the right hand, which I did. He curved his hand round mine, and told me as long as I played right, his hand would not interfere with mine. I played up one octave, and then I wished to go on by placing my first finger on F sharp. To do that I naturally turned my hand outward, so as to make the step from my thumb on E to F sharp with the first, but it came bang up against Deppe's hand like a sort of blockade. "Go on," said Deppe. "I can't, when you keep your hand right in the way," said I. "My hand isn't in the way," said he, "but your hand is out of position."
So I started again. This time I reflected, and when I got my third finger on D sharp, I kept my hand slanting from left to right, but I prepared for the turning under of the thumb, and for getting my first finger on F sharp, by turning my wrist sharply out. That brought my thumb down on the note and prepared me instantly for the next step. In fact, my wrist carried my finger right on to the sharp without any change in the position of the hand, thus giving the most perfect legato in the world, and I continued the whole scale in the same manner. Just try it once, and you'll see how ingenious it is—only one must be careful not to throw out the elbow in turning out the wrist. As in the ascending scale one has to turn the thumb under twice in every octave, Deppe's way of playing avoids twice throwing the hand out of position as one does by the old way of playing straight along, and the smoothness and rapidity of the scale must be much greater. The direction of the hand in running passages is always a little oblique.
Don't you remember my telling you that Liszt has an inconceivable lightness, swiftness and smoothness of execution? When Deppe was explaining this to me, I suddenly remembered that when he was playing scales or passages, his fingers seemed to lie across the keys in a slanting sort of way, and to execute these rapid passages almost without any perceptible motion. Well, dear, there it was again! As Liszt is a great experimentalist, he probably does all these things by instinct, and without reasoning it out, but that is why nobodys else's playing sounds like his. Some of his scholars had most dazzling techniques, and I used to rack my brains to find out how it was, that no matter how perfectly anybody else played, the minute Liszt sat down and played the same thing, the previous playing seemed rough in comparison. I'm sure Deppe is the only master in the world who has thought that out; though, as he says himself, it is the egg of Columbus—"when you know it!"