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.
Busoni.
December 23, 1898.
Of the four principal pianoforte styles—the Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt styles—Mr. Busoni has shown himself a past-master. It has been said that these four are the only genuine pianoforte styles. But if there is a fifth having typical originality distinct from all others, it is the Brahms style, and in that style Mr. Busoni was heard for the first time yesterday evening. His interpretation of Brahms's first Concerto was no less masterly than his Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt renderings. The work is one of exceptional importance. Written when the composer was only twenty-five years of age, and almost entirely unknown, and proving, when first produced at Leipsic, with the composer himself as soloist, a dead failure, it nevertheless was, like Carlyle's "French Revolution," the first work showing the author to be a genuine and original man of genius. It shows him deliberately rejecting all that was traditionally connected with the idea of a work in "concert style," affording to the soloist none of the conventional opportunities for display, demanding from him the mastery of an enormously difficult technique, full of double-note passages, full of heavy and exhausting reduplications; demanding also exceptional tact, intelligence, and presence of mind such as are only to be found in a few players of the very first rank. The music of the first movement is of profoundly sinister and tragic import, portraying the rage, grief, and unrest in some struggle of the heroic soul. It has nothing entertaining and nothing to propitiate superficial taste. No wonder it was a failure at Leipsic in 1859, when that centre of enlightenment was given up to the Mendelssohn cult! After the composer himself, the first pianist to take up the Concerto was Hans von Bülow, who with a performance at a Philharmonic Concert in Berlin won early recognition of its surpassing merit. Other performers who contributed towards the success of the work with the world in general were Madame Schumann and Mr. D'Albert. At the present time it may be doubted whether there is any better exponent of it than Mr. Busoni. What a German writer has called the "heaven-storming" first motive was delivered in a manner that showed perfect grasp of its poetic import, and the tragic eloquence of the ensuing development was never marred either by any sort of technical fault or by inappropriate expression. The "Benedictus" forming the slow movement is fraught with that profound religious feeling the musical expression of which has been accomplished only by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. It was no less perfectly rendered than the opening movement, and the concluding Rondo was played with appropriate breadth, energy, and mastery of heavy and intricate passages. Afterwards another work for the same instrumental combination was played, namely, Liszt's "Spanish Rhapsody," which Mr. Busoni has treated very much as Liszt himself treated the "Wanderer Fantasie" of Schubert, making an arrangement on the concerto principle, with a part for pianoforte and orchestral accompaniments. The Rhapsody is put together on the same principle as the Hungarian Rhapsodies, having majestic motives in the first part, and afterwards dance themes with variations and ornamentations in the transcendental manner peculiar to Liszt. Mr. Busoni's orchestration is all very clever and telling, and in playing the solo part, which is brilliant beyond all description, he, as it were, came down from the pedestal of seriousness and showed that he also can, on occasion, be simply entertaining. As an extra piece without orchestra, Mr. Busoni played Liszt's "Campanella"—probably the most catchy and difficult concert study in existence. The almost incredible brilliancy with which it was performed seemed to leave the audience half dazed and wholly captivated.
Busoni.
November 25, 1904.
The concert was remarkable for one of Mr. Busoni's meteoric appearances, the special function of which, in the order of nature, seems to be to throw critics into a state of utter confusion and bewilderment. He has been more frantically praised and more severely blamed than any other pianist of the present day, and he never fails to justify both praise and blame. He is the modern Sphinx among executive musicians, just as Strauss is among composers. Nothing is certain but his matchless technical power and the uncanny force of his own individuality that, without misconception or inadequate conception, still does violence to every composer, by a sort of inner necessity. Every accusation except that of dulness or feebleness has been brought against Mr. Busoni, and with justice. Yet he can well afford to smile at his critics; for the fury of one is as eloquent a testimony as the rapture of another to his prodigious faculty of stimulation. Most of the fault-finding is a covert expression of rage at the writer's hopeless inability to estimate so prodigious a talent or to guess what it will "do next." Henselt's Concerto, hackneyed in Germany but almost unknown in England, was his accompanied piece yesterday. It is the most considerable work of that curious composer, who made a great reputation as a pianist though he scarcely ever played in public, and some reputation as a composer though he never did anything more original than the pianoforte Etude "Si oiseau j'étais," and for the most part rested satisfied with giving enfeebled reproductions of Chopin's ideas thinly disguised by arpeggio accompaniments in extended harmonies and ornamental passages in double notes. In a few points, such as the use of martellato octaves and chord passages, he had a more modern technique than Chopin's; but there is no justification for his compositions except good laying out for the instrument. From beginning to end one finds him cultivating the same kind of mild and voluminous euphony. Mr. Busoni played the three movements in his customary style, solving all the technical problems that they present rather more intelligently than anyone else. His unaccompanied solos were, first, two astonishingly ingenious Preludes constructed on themes of chorales by Bach, which are treated as canti fermi, and accompanied by passages in florid counterpoint, having the character of an obbligato. The theme of the first was "Sleepers, wake," and of the second the chorale known in this country as "Luther's Hymn." The third piece was Liszt's seldom-heard transcription of Beethoven's "Adelaide."