Once only during his visit to London in September 1897 he allowed himself to be persuaded into playing in public by one of his pupils. This was at Mr. Daniel Mayer's reception at the Salle Erard, where Leschetizky gave some of his own compositions: "L'Aveu," "La Source," "Barcarolle," and the "Mazurka" in E flat. The storm of applause when he finished made speech impossible; but, ever critical of himself, he inquired anxiously in a whisper of those intimate friends around him: "Oh, children, have I played badly—oh, tell me, have I played badly?"
He stayed a few weeks only, but this time he was so sorry to leave London that he has been making plans to come back ever since.
He spends part of every summer at Ischyl, where many years ago he bought a beautiful villa, and where for months he lives content amongst trees and mountains and the company of an occasional sympathetic friend.
Sometimes he goes to Carlsbad for a few weeks, sometimes to Wiesbaden, but the winter always find him at home in Vienna, for his working year begins in November and—except for a day or two at Christmas—continues without a break until the following June.
CHAPTER III
THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD
Over a hundred and fifty years ago, in the year 1747, John Sebastian Bach went to Potsdam to visit Frederick the Great, and while there he was asked to try over some of the new fortepianos that had recently been made for the King by Silbermann. He did so, and disliked the noise extremely. His ears, too long accustomed to the gentle tinkle of his beloved clavichord, could not accept this harsh, modern instrument, and he returned home thankful that Providence had not brought him up on such an abominable invention.
But his son, Carl Philip Emanuel, in the service of the King, and having therefore the opportunity to study the Fortepiano at his leisure, became so much interested in it that he wrote a book on the art of playing it—the first book that exists on piano technique. His father's instructions for the clavichord advised players to keep the hand as quiet as possible, "to wipe a note off the keys with the end-joint of the finger only, as if taking up a coin from a table"—"not to be too lavish in the employment of the thumb." Carl Philip Emanuel transferred what he could of this to his own book, putting in a plea for certain necessary innovations—he thought they might look on the thumb with a little more favour: on rare occasions a note might be struck, it was inadvisable now to pass the fingers over each other backwards if they could do without. They must, above all things, maintain an elegant tranquillity, a quiet deportment, being careful to sit precisely before the middle of the keyboard, using their fingers softly, caressing
Those dancing chips