America probably will never again harbour such a constellation of piano talent. I sometimes wonder if the vanished generation of piano artists played much better than those men. Godowsky, Hofmann, the lyric and most musical Harold Bauer; the many-sided, richly endowed, and charming Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Hambourg, Busoni, and Paderewski are not often matched. Heine called Thalberg a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel (not a negro minstrel, for a chalk-burner is necessarily white), Mme. Pleyel a sibyl, and Doehler—a pianist! The contemporary piano hierarchy might be thus classed: Josef Hofmann, a king; Paderewski, a poet; Godowsky, a prophet; Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, a sibyl; D'Albert, a titan; Busoni, a philosopher; Rosenthal, a hero, and Alexander Lambert—a pianist. Well, Mr. Lambert may be congratulated on such an ascription; Doehler was a great technician in his day, and when the "friend of pianists" (Lambert could pattern after Schindler, whose visiting-card read: "l'Ami de Beethoven") masters his modesty an admirable piano virtuoso is revealed. So let him be satisfied with the honourable appellation of "pianist." He is in good company.
And the ladies! I am sorry I can't say, "place aux dames!" Space forbids. I've heard them all, from Arabella Goddard to Mme. Montigny-Remaury (in Paris, 1878, with her master, Camille Saint-Saëns); from Alide Topp, Marie Krebs, Anna Mehlig, Pauline Fichtner, Vera Timinoff, Ingeborg Bronsart, Madeline Schiller, to Julia Rivé-King; from Cecilia Gaul and Svarvady-Clauss to Anna Bock; from the Amazon, Sofie Menter, the most masculine of Liszt players, to Adèle Margulies, Yoland Maero, and Antoinette Szumowska-Adamowska; from Ilonka von Ravacsz to Ethel Leginska—who plays like a house afire; from Helen Hopekirk to Katharine Goodson; from Clara Schumann to Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, Olga Samaroff, and the newly come Brazilian Guiomar Novaes—the list might be unduly prolonged.
I heard Paderewski play last spring. Surely he has now the "grand manner" in all its dramatic splendour, and without its old-fashioned pretentious rhetoric. Nor has he lost the lusciousness of his touch—a Caruso voice on the keyboard—or the poetic intensity of his Chopin and Schumann interpretations. He is still Prince Charming.
Not only do I fear prolixity, but the confusing of critical values, for I write from memory, and I admit that I've had more pleasure from the "intimate" pianists than from the forgers of tonal thunderbolts; that is—Rubinstein excepted—from such masters in miniature as Joseffy, Godowsky, Carl Heyman, De Pachmann, and Paderewski. I find in the fresh, sparkling playing of Mischa Levitski, Benno Moiseivich, and Guiomar Novaes high promise for their future. The latter came here unheralded and as the pupil of that sterling virtuoso and pedagogue, Isidor Phillipp of the Paris Conservatory.
It is noteworthy that only Chopin, Liszt, and Von Bülow were Christian born among the supreme masters of the keyboard; the rest (with a few exceptions) were and are members of that race whose religious tenets specifically incline them to the love and practice of music.
CHAPTER XVI
JAMES JOYCE
Who is James Joyce? is a question that was answered by John Quinn, who told us that the new writer was from Dublin and at present residing in Switzerland; that he is not in good health—his eyes trouble him—and that he was once a student in theology, but soon gave up the idea of becoming a priest. He is evidently a member of the new group of young Irish writers who see their country and countrymen in anything but a flattering light. Ireland, surely the most beautiful and most melancholy island on the globe, is not the Isle of Saints for those iconoclasts. George Moore is a poet who happens to write English, though he often thinks in French; Bernard Shaw, notwithstanding his native wit, is of London and the Londoners; while Yeats and Synge are essentially Celtic, and both poets. Yes, and there is the delightful James Stephen, who mingles angels' pin-feathers with rainbow gold; a magic decoction of which we never weary. But James Joyce, potentially a poet, and a realist of the De Maupassant breed, envisages Dublin and the Dubliners with a cruel scrutinising gaze. He is as truthful as Tchekov, and as grey—that Tchekov compared with whose the "realism" of De Maupassant is romantic bric-à-brac, gilded with a fine style. Joyce is as implacably naturalistic as the Russian in his vision of the sombre, mean, petty, dusty commonplaces of middle-class life, and he sometimes suggests the Frenchman in his clear, concise, technical methods. The man is indubitably a fresh talent.