Eugen d'Albert, surely the greatest of Scotch pianists—he was born at Glasgow, though musically educated in London—is another heaven-stormer. I heard him at Berlin some years ago, in Philharmonic Hall, and people stood up in their excitement—Liszt redivivus!
It was the grand manner in its most chaotic form. A musical volcano belching up lava, scoriæ, rocks, hunks of Beethoven—the Appassionata Sonata it happened to be—while the infuriated little Vulcan threw emotional fuel into his furnace. The unfortunate instrument must have been a mass of splintered steel, wood, and wire after the musical giant had finished. It was a magnificent spectacle, and the music glorious. Eugen d'Albert, whether he is or isn't the son of Karl Tausig—as Weimar gossip had it; Weimar, when in the palmy days every other pianist you met was a natural son of Liszt—or else pretended to be one—has more than a moiety of that virtuoso's genius. He is a great artist, and occasionally the magic fire flares and lights up the firmament of music.
I think it was in 1879 that Rafael Joseffy visited us for the first time; but I didn't hear him till 1880. The reason I remember the date is that this greatly beloved Hungarian made his début at old Chickering Hall (then at Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street); but I saw him in Steinway Hall. Another magician with a peculiarly personal style. In the beginning you thought of the aurora borealis, shooting-stars, and exquisite meteors; a beautiful style, though not a classic interpreter then. With the years Joseffy deepened and broadened. The iridescent shimmer was never absent. No one played the E minor Concerto of Chopin as did Joseffy. He had the tradition from his beloved master, Tausig, as Tausig had it from Chopin by way of Liszt. (Tausig always regretted that he had never heard Chopin play.) Joseffy, in turn, transmitted the tradition to his early pupil, Moriz Rosenthal, in whose répertoire it is the most Chopinesque of all his performances.
And do you remember the Chevalier de Kontski, Carl Baermann, Franz Rummel, S. B. Mills—who introduced here so many modern concertos—the huge Norwegian Edmund Neupert, who lived at the Hotel Liszt, next door to Steinway Hall, Constantin von Sternberg, and Max Vogrich, the Hungarian with the Chopin-like profile?
In the same school as Joseffy is the capricious De Pachmann; with Joseffy I sat at the first recital of this extraordinary Russian in Chickering Hall (1890). Joseffy, with his accustomed generosity of spirit—he was the most sympathetic and human of great virtuosi—at once recognised the artistic worth of Vladimir de Pachmann. This last representative of a school that included the names of Hummel, Cramer, Field, Thalberg, Chopin, the little De Pachmann (he was then bearded like a pirate) captivated us. It was all miniature, without passion or pathos or the grand manner, but in its genre his playing was perfection; the polished perfection of an intricately carved ivory ornament. De Pachmann played certain sides of Chopin incomparably; capriciously, even perversely. In a small hall, sitting on a chair that precisely suited his fidgety spirit, then, if in the mood, a recital by him was something unforgettable.
After De Pachmann—Paderewski. Paderewski, the master-colourist, the grand visionary, whose art is often strained, morbid, fantastic. And after Paderewski? Why, Leopold Godowsky, of course. He belongs to the Joseffy-De Pachmann, not to the Rubinstein-Josef Hofmann, group. I once called him the superman of piano-playing. Nothing like him, as far as I know, is to be found in the history of piano-playing since Chopin. He is an apparition. A Chopin doubled by a contrapuntalist. Bach and Chopin. The spirit of the German cantor and the Polish tone-poet in curious conjunction. His playing is transcendental; his piano compositions the transcendentalism of the future. That way, else retrogression! All has been accomplished in ideas and figuration. A new synthesis—the combination of seemingly disparate elements and styles—with innumerable permutations, he has accomplished. He is a miracle-worker. The Violet Ray. Dramatic passion, flame, and fury are not present; they would be intruders on his map of music. The piano tone is always legitimate, never forced. But every other attribute he boasts. His ten digits are ten independent voices recreating the ancient polyphonic art of the Flemings. He is like a Brahma at the piano. Before his serene and all-embracing vision every school appears and disappears in the void. The beauty of his touch and tone are only matched by the delicate adjustment of his phrasing to the larger curve of the composition. Nothing musical is foreign to him. He is a pianist for pianists, and I am glad to say that the majority of them gladly recognise this fact.
One evening Godowsky was playing his piano sonata with its subtle intimations of Brahms, Chopin, and Liszt, and its altogether Godowskian colour and rhythmic life—he is the greatest creator of rhythmic values since Liszt, and that is a "large order"—when he was interrupted by the entrance of Josef Hofmann. Godowsky and Hofmann are as inseparable as were Chopin and Liszt. Heine called the latter pair the Dioscurii of music. In the Godowsky apartment stood several concert grands. Hofmann nonchalantly removed his coat and, making an apology for disturbing us, he went into another room and soon we heard him slowly practising. What do you suppose? Some new concerto with new-fangled bedevilments? O Sancta Simplicitas! This giant, if ever there was one, played at a funereal tempo the octave passages in the left hand of the Heroic Polonaise of Chopin (Opus 53). Every schoolgirl rattles them off as "easy," but, with the humility of a great artist, Hofmann practised the section as if it were still a stumbling-block. De Lenz records that Tausig did the same.
Later, Conductor Artur Bodanzky of the Metropolitan Opera dropped in, and several pianists and critics followed, and soon the Polish pianist was playing for us all some well-known compositions by a certain Dvorsky; also an extremely brilliant and effective concert study in C minor by Constantin von Sternberg. From 1888, when he was a wonder-child here, Jozio Hofmann's artistic development has been logical and continuous. His mellow muscularity evokes Rubinstein. No one plays Rubinstein as does this Harmonious Blacksmith—and with the piety of Rubinstein's pet pupil. I once compared him to a steam-hammer, whose marvellous sensitivity enables it to crack an egg-shell or crush iron. Hofmann's range of tonal dynamics is unequalled, even in this age of perfected piano technique. He is at home in all schools, and his knowledge is enormous. At moments his touch is as rich as a Kneisel Quartet accord.
At the famous Rudolph Schirmer dinner, given in 1915, among other distinguished guests there were nearly a score of piano virtuosi. The newspapers humorously commented upon the fact that there was not a squabble, though with so many nationalities one row, at least, might have been expected. As a matter of fact, if any discussion had arisen it would not have been over politics, but about the fingering of the Double-Note Study in G sharp minor of Chopin, so difficult to play slowly—the most formidable of argument-breeding questions among pianists. A parterre of pianists, indeed, some in New York because of the war, while Paderewski and Rosenthal were conspicuous by their absence. Think of a few names: Joseffy—he died several months later, Gabrilowitsch, Hofmann, Godowsky, Carl Friedberg, Mark Hambourg—a heaven-stormer in the Rubinstein-Hercules manner—Leonard Borwick, Alexander Lambert, Ernest Schelling, Stojowski, Percy Grainger—the young Siegfried of the Antipodes—August Fraemcke, Cornelius Ruebner, and—another apparition in the world of piano-playing—Ferruccio Busoni.
This Italian, the greatest of Italian piano virtuosi—the history of which can claim such names as Domenico Scarlatti, Clementi, Fumigalli, Martucci, Sgambati—is also a composer who has set agog conservative critics by the boldness of his imagination. As an artist he may be said to embody the intellectuality of Von Bülow, the technical brilliancy of the Liszt group. Busoni is eminently a musical thinker.