You lay your notes on the table, so he can see that you want to play, and sit down. He takes a turn up and down the room, looks at the music, and if the piece interests him he will call upon you. We bring the same piece to him but once, and but once play it through.
Yesterday I had prepared for him his "Au Bord d'une Source." I was nervous and played badly. He was not to be put out, however, but acted as if he thought I had played charmingly, and then he sat down and played the whole thing himself, oh, so exquisitely! It made me feel like a wood-chopper. The notes just seemed to ripple off his fingers' ends with scarce any perceptible motion. As he neared the close I noticed that funny little expression come over his face, which he always has when he means to surprise you, and he then suddenly took an unexpected chord and extemporized a poetical little end, quite different from the written one. Do you wonder that people go distracted over him?
One day this week, when we were with Liszt, he was in such high spirits that it was as if he had suddenly become twenty years younger. A student from the Stuttgart conservatory played a Liszt concerto. His name is V., and he is dreadfully nervous. Liszt kept up a running fire of satire all the time he was playing, but in a good-natured way. I shouldn't have minded it if it had been I. In fact, I think it would have inspired me; but poor V. hardly knew whether he was on his head or on his feet. It was too funny. Everything that Liszt says is so striking. For instance, in one place where V. was playing the melody rather feebly, Liszt suddenly took his seat at the piano and said, "When I play, I always play for the people in the gallery, so that those people who pay only five groschens for their seats also hear something." Then he began, and I wish you could have heard him! The sound didn't seem to be very loud, but it was penetrating and far-reaching. When he had finished, he raised one hand in the air, and you seemed to see all the people in the gallery drinking in the sound. That is the way Liszt teaches you. He presents an idea to you, and it takes fast hold of your mind and sticks there. Music is such a real, visible thing to him that he always has a symbol, instantly, in the material world to express his idea. One day, when I was playing, I made too much movement with my hand in a rotary sort of a passage where it was difficult to avoid it. "Keep your hand still, Fraulein," said Liszt; "don't make omelet." I couldn't help laughing—it hit me on the head so nicely. He is far too sparing of his playing, unfortunately, and like Tausig, sits down and plays only a few bars at a time generally. It is dreadful when he stops, just as you are at the height of your enjoyment, but he is so thoroughly blase that he doesn't care to show off before people and doesn't like to have any one pay him a compliment about his playing. In Liszt I can at least say that my ideal in something has been realized. He goes far beyond all that I expected. Anything so perfectly beautiful as he looks when he sits at the piano I never saw, and yet he is almost an old man now. I enjoy him as I would an exquisite work of art. His personal magnetism is immense, and I can scarcely bear it when he plays. He can make me cry all he chooses, and that is saying a good deal, because I've heard so much music, and never have been affected by it. Even Joachim, whom I think divine, never moved me. When Liszt plays anything pathetic, it sounds as if he had been through everything, and opens all one's wounds afresh. All that one has ever suffered comes before one again. Who was it that I heard say once, that years ago he saw Clara Schumann sitting in tears near the platform during one of Liszt's performances? Liszt knows well the influence he has on people, for he always fixes his eyes on some one of us when he plays, and I believe he tries to wring our hearts. When he plays a passage and goes pearling down the keyboard, he often looks over at me and smiles, to see whether I am appreciating it.
But I doubt if he feels any particular emotion himself when he is piercing you through with his rendering. He is simply hearing every tone, knowing exactly what effect he wishes to produce and just how to do it. In fact, he is practically two persons in one—the listener and the performer. But what immense self-command that implies! No matter how fast he plays you always feel that there is "plenty of time"—no need to be anxious! You might as well try to move one of the pyramids as fluster him. Tausig possessed this repose in a technical way, and his touch was marvelous; but he never drew the tears to your eyes. He could not wind himself through all the subtle labyrinths of the heart as Liszt does. Liszt does such bewitching little things! The other day, for instance, Fraulein Gaul was playing something to him, and in it were two runs, and after each run two staccato chords. She did them most beautifully and struck the chords immediately after. "No, no," said Liszt; "after you make a run you must wait a minute before you strike the chords, as if in admiration of your own performance. You must pause, as if to say, 'How nicely I did that!'" Then he sat down and made a run himself, waited a second, and then struck the two chords in the treble, saying as he did so, "Bravo!" and then he played again, struck the other chord and said again, "Bravo!" and positively, it was as if the piano had softly applauded.
Liszt hasn't the nervous irritability common to artists, but on the contrary his disposition is the most exquisite and tranquil in the world. We have been there incessantly and I've never seen him ruffled except two or three times, and then he was tired and not himself, and it was a most transient thing. When I think what a little savage Tausig often was, and how cuttingly sarcastic Kullak could be at times, I am astonished that Liszt so rarely lost his temper. He has the power of turning the best side of every one outward, also the most marvelous and instant appreciation of what that side is. If there is anything in you, you may be sure that Liszt will know it. On Monday I had a most delightful tete-a-tete with Liszt, quite by chance. I had occasion to call upon him for something, and strange to say, he was alone, sitting by his table writing. Generally all sorts of people are up there. He insisted upon my staying for a while, and we had the most amusing and entertaining conversation imaginable. It was the first time I ever heard Liszt really talk, for he contents himself mostly with making little jests. He is full of esprit. Another evening I was there about twilight and Liszt sat at the piano looking through a new oratorio which had just come out in Paris, upon "Christus." He asked me to turn for him, and evidently was not interested, for he would skip whole pages and begin again, here and there. There was only a single lamp, and that a rather dim one, so that the room was all in shadow, and Liszt wore his Merlin-like aspect. I asked him to tell me how he produced a certain effect he makes in his arrangement of the ballad in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." He looked very "fin" as the French say, but did not reply. He never gives a direct answer to a direct question. "Ah," said I, "you won't tell." He smiled and then immediately played the passage. It was a long arpeggio, and the effect he made was, as I had supposed, a pedal effect. He kept the pedal down throughout, and played the beginning of the passage in a grand sort of manner, and then all the rest of it with a very pianissimo touch, and so lightly, that the continuity of the arpeggios was destroyed, and the notes seemed to be just strewn in, as if you broke a wreath of flowers and scattered them according to your fancy. It is a most striking and beautiful effect, and I told him I didn't see how he ever thought of it. "Oh, I've invented a great many things," said he, indifferently—"this, for instance"—and he began playing a double roll of octaves in chromatics in the bass of the piano. It was very grand and made the room reverberate.
"Magnificent," said I.
"Did you ever hear me do a storm?" said he.
"No."
"Ah, you ought to hear me do a storm! Storms are my forte!"
Then to himself between his teeth, while a weird look came into his eyes as if he could indeed rule the blast, "Then crash the trees!"