Brahms has reared upon this Schumann technic a glorious structure, whose foundations—Bach-Schumann—are certainly not builded on sand. You may get a fair notion of the Brahms piano technic by playing the figure he gave Tausig for that great master’s Daily Studies, and also in his later fifty-one studies. Look at his wonderful variations—true studies; read the Paganini variations; are they not heaven storming? Brains, brains and Bach. His studies on studies are not too entertaining.
One is the rondo by Weber in his C major sonata, the so-called “mouvement perpétuel.” This has Brahms transcribed for the left hand, lifting the bass part into the treble. Anything more dispiriting I cannot imagine. It makes one feel as if the clock struck nineteen in the watches of the night. The étude in sixths on Chopin’s beautiful F minor étude in op. 25 is an attempt to dress an exquisite violet with a baggy suit of pepper-and-salt clothes. It is a gauche affair altogether, and I fancy the perpetrator was ashamed of himself, for, unlike Joseffy’s astounding transcription of Chopin’s G flat étude, Brahms’ study upon a study is utterly unklaviermassig.
Constantin von Sternberg tells a story about this F minor étude of Brahms-Chopin. When it first appeared Moszkowski was trying it over in the presence of the Scharwenkas and Von Sternberg. Not content with playing the right hand triplets in double-sixths, as Brahms had done, he transposed them to the left hand, went to work rather hesitatingly, saying, naturally enough: “Why not do it this way?”
It out-Heroded Herod, and Xaver Scharwenka could stand it no longer; when Moszkowski stuck for a moment he strode up to the pianist, seized his nose and chin, opened his mouth, gazed in it, and then said in a slightly irritated voice: “That is the worst of these machines; they will get out of order sometimes.”
Bendel’s étude in double-sixths is a good study, evidently modelled after Chopin’s G sharp minor study. Zarembski has written a finger-breaker in B flat minor, and the two Von Schloezer studies are by no means easy studies, but there are technical heights yet to be explored. Charles V. Alkan, the Parisian pianist, has concocted, contrived and manufactured about twenty-seven studies, which almost reach the topmost technical notch, and are, to confess the truth, unmusical. They are the extreme outcome of the Liszt technic and consequently have only historical value. Don’t play them, for you can’t, which remark is both Celtic and convenient.
Rubinstein’s op. 23—his six études—cannot be lightly passed over. The first in F and the well-known staccato étude in C should be studied. He has also written two studies, both in the key of C, one of which is called Study on False Notes, and sometimes the Handball. They are all very “pianistic.” Strelezski’s five concert studies are very modern and require a cyclopean grip. Nos. 4 and 5 are the most musical. The same composer’s étude, The Wind, is an excellent study in unison. The valse étude is artificial.
You can play Balakireff’s Islamey, a fantasy Orientale, if you wish some muscle twisting.
No need of telling you of Tausig’s Daily Studies. No pianist should be without them. The Rosenthal-Schytte studies are rich in ideas, and Schytte has written some Vortrag studies that are excellent.
Among modern artistic studies Saint-Saëns’, and MacDowell’s are the best and most brilliant, and Godowsky has made some striking paraphrases of Chopin studies. A novelty are the Exercises Journalières preceded by a preface from the pen of Camille Saint-Saëns. Tausig thought of such a comprehensive scheme as this, and Kullak, in the third book of his octave school, puts it partially into execution. But it remains for Isidor Philipp to work the formula out to its utmost, and the result is a volume unique in the annals of piano literature and of surpassing value to pianist, teacher and pupil.
This volume, I have no hesitation in saying, is the most significant since the posthumous publication of Tausig’s Daily Studies. All pianists have felt the need of such a work, and in his dumb-thumb way Oscar Raif taught his pupils that the manner to master difficulties was to walk chromatically about the passages in question. At a blow Philipp demolishes thousands of technical studies.