Rubinstein I knew very well (I was his pupil), and have heard him play a great many times. Liszt, who died when I was sixteen years old and had not appeared in public for some twenty years previously, I never met and never heard. Still, from the descriptions which many of my friends gave me of him, and from the study of his works, I have been able to form a fair idea of his playing and his personality. As a virtuoso I think Liszt stood above Rubinstein, for his playing must have possessed amazing, dazzling qualities. Rubinstein excelled by his sincerity, by his demoniacal, Heaven-storming power of great impassionedness, qualities which with Liszt had passed through the sieve of a superior education and—if you understand how I mean that term—gentlemanly elegance. He was, in the highest meaning of the word, a man of the world; Rubinstein, a world-stormer, with a sovereign disregard for conventionality and for Mrs. Grundy. The principal difference lay in the characters of the two. As musicians, with regard to their natural endowments and ability, they were probably of the same gigantic calibre, such as we would seek in vain at the present time.
As to One Composer—Excluding All Others
If I am deeply interested in Beethoven's music can I not find in him all that there is in music, in both an æsthetic and a technical sense? Is any one's music more profound?
You imagine yourself in an impenetrable stronghold whence, safe from all attacks, you may look upon all composers (except Beethoven) with a patronizing, condescending smile. But you are gravely in error. Life is too rich in experience, too many-sided in its manifestations, to permit any one master, however great, to exhaust its interpretation through his art. If you base your preference for Beethoven upon your sympathies, and if, for this reason, his music satisfies you better than that of any other composer, you are to be complimented upon your good taste. But that gives you no right to contest, for instance, the profoundness of Bach, the æsthetic charm of Chopin, the wonders of Mozart's art, nor the many and various merits of your contemporary composers. The least that one can be charged with who finds the whole of life expressed in any one composer is one-sidedness, not to speak of the fact that the understanding cannot be very deep for one master if it is closed to all others. One of the chief requirements for true connoisseurship is catholicity of taste.
A Sensible Scheme of Playing for Pleasure
I am fifty-six years old, live in the mountains sixty-five miles from any railroad, alone with my husband, and I have not taken lessons in thirty-five years. Do you think "Pischna" would help me much to regain my former ability to play? If not, what would you advise me to do?
Refrain from all especially technical work. Since your love of music is strong enough to cause you to resume your playing you should take as much pleasure in it as possible and work technically only in the pieces you play—that is, in those places which offer you difficulties. Decide upon a comfortable fingering first, and practise the difficult places separately and slowly until you feel that you can venture to play them in their appropriate speed.
First Learn to Play Simple Things Well
What pieces would you advise me to memorize after Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor and Chopin's A-flat Ballade? These pieces do not appeal to the majority of people, but I enjoy them.
If such a work as Chopin's Ballade in A-flat does not "appeal to the majority"—as you say—the fault cannot lie in the composition, but must be sought in the interpretation. Why not try a few pieces of lesser complexity and play them so perfectly that they do appeal to the majority. Try Chopin's Nocturne, opus 27, No. 2; Schumann's Romanza, opus. 28, No. 2; or his "Traumerei," or some of the more pretentious "Songs Without Words" by Mendelssohn.