I believe the gap can be safely crossed by using the two very valuable Hummel concertos in A and B minor, for between Chopin—the early Chopin—and Hummel there is a certain resemblance. Some of Hummel’s passage work, for example, is singularly like Chopin’s juvenile style, and Chopin, as everyone knows, was extremely fond of the Hummel concertos. Of course the resemblance is an external one; spiritually there is no kinship between the sleek pianist of Weimar and the genius of Warsaw.
Yet pieces and concertos do not quite serve the purpose, and may the Fates and Joseffy pardon me for the blasphemy, but I fear I do not appreciate the much vaunted Moscheles studies. To be sure, they are fat, healthy, indeed, almost buxom, but they lack just a pinch of that Attic salt which conserves Cramer and Clementi. Understand, I do not mean to speak irreverently of Moscheles. I think that his G minor concerto is the greatest conservatory concerto ever written, and his various Hommages for two dry pianists serve the agreeable purpose of driving a man to politics. I wish merely to estimate the op. 70, 95 and 51 from the viewpoint of a utilitarian.
There is nothing in op. 70 that has not been done far better by contemporaries of the composer. For instance, the double note study is weak when compared with that best of all double note studies, Czerny’s toccata in C. En passant, that is one of the most remarkable special studies ever written, and is certainly number one in the famous trio of double-note études, the other two being the Schumann toccata and Chopin’s G sharp minor study. Include by all means the Czerny toccata in your list, and get the Moszkowski edition, which is remarkable for nothing except that it omits the celebrated misprint at the close of the original edition.
There are studies by Kalkbrenner noticeable for their virtuoso character. Ries, too, has done some good work, notably the first of the set in the Peters’ edition. Then there is Edmund Neupert. His hundred daily exercises are really original, and contain new technical, figures, and his études in the Edition Peters are charming. They suggest Grieg, but a more virile, masterful Grieg.
Take the Thalberg studies; how infinitely more “pianistic” and poetic than the respectable Moscheles! I know that it is the fashion of the day to sneer at Thalberg and his machine-made fantaisies, but we should not be blind to the beauties of his Art of Singing on the Piano, his études, op. 26, one of them in C, a tremolo study, being more useful than Gottschalk’s famous Tremolo, not forgetting the op. 45, a very pretty theme in repeated notes.
Thalberg has written music that cannot be passed over by any fair-minded teacher or pupil. Another objection to Moscheles is that he is already old-fashioned. His style is rococo, his ornamentation trite and much of his work stale. Study him if you will; a half dozen of his études will suffice; but do not imagine that he prepares the hand for Henselt or Chopin, as Von Bülow so fondly fancied.
There is one man might be suggested—a composer who is as much forgotten as Steibelt, who wrote a Storm for the piano, and thought that he was as good a man as Beethoven. Have you ever heard of Joseph Christoph Kessler?
It is difficult to discover much about him, except that Chopin dedicated the German edition of his preludes, op. 28, “à Monsieur J. C. Kessler.” This same Kessler was born in Augsburg in 1800; he studied philosophy as well as music at Vienna, and at Lemberg in the house of his patron, Count Potocki, he composed his op. 20, twenty-four studies, dedicated to J. N. Hummel. Kessler was a brilliant pianist, met Chopin at Warsaw, and later dedicated to him his twenty-four preludes, op. 31. He was highly thought of by Kalkbrenner, and Fétis, and Moscheles incorporated some of his études in their Method of Methods. In 1835 Kessler attracted Schumann’s attention, and that great critic said that the pianist had good stuff in him. “Mann von geist und sogar poetischem geist,” he wrote, but somehow his music fell into disuse and is hardly ever heard. Fancy a pianist playing a Kessler étude in concert, yet that is what Franz Liszt did, and though the studies themselves hardly warrant a concert hearing, there is much that is brilliant, effective and eminently solid in many of them.
Kessler died at Vienna, January 13, 1872.
Let us examine more closely these studies. In four books, published by Haslinger, they are too bulky, besides being fingered badly. Out of the twenty-four there are ten well worthy of study. The rest are old-fashioned. Book I., No. 1, is in C and is a melody in broken chords that is peculiarly trying to the fourth finger. The stretches are modern and the study is very useful. No. 2, in A minor, is an excellent approach to all interlocking figures occurring in modern piano music. This, too, is very valuable. No. 3 I can recommend, for it is a melody in chord skips. No. 4 is very useful for the development of the left hand. No. 5 is confusing on account of hand crossing, and it could be dispensed with, while No. 6 serves the same purpose as No. 4. If you can play Nos. 4 and 6 of Kessler you need not fear the C minor or C sharp minor studies of Chopin, wherein the left hand plays such an important part.