On the other hand, talent alone cannot lift the veil that hides the spiritual content of a composition if its possessor neglects to examine the latter carefully as to its purely material ingredients. He may flatter the ear, sensuously speaking, but he can never play the piece in style.
Now How Can We Know whether we are or are not approaching the spiritual phase of a piece? By repetition under unremitting attention to the written values. If, then, you should find how much there is still left for you to do, you have proved to yourself that you have understood the piece spiritually and are on the right track to master it. With every repetition you will discover some hitherto unnoticed defect in your interpretation. Obviate these defects, one by one, and in so doing you will come nearer and nearer to the spiritual essence of the work in hand.
As to the remaining "purely technical task" (as I said before), it must not be underestimated! To transmit one's matured conception to one's auditors requires a considerable degree of mechanical skill, and this skill, in its turn, must be under absolute control of the will. Of course—after the foregoing—this does not mean that everybody who has a good and well-controlled technic can interpret a piece in style. Remember that to possess wealth is one thing, to put it to good use is quite another.
It is sometimes said that the too objective study of a piece may impair the "individuality" of its rendition. Have no fear of that! If ten players study the same piece with the same high degree of exactness and objectivity—depend upon it: each one will still play it quite differently from the nine others, though each one may think his rendition the only correct one. For each one will express what, according to his lights, he has mentally and temperamentally absorbed. Of the distinctive feature which constitutes the difference in the ten conceptions each one will have been unconscious while it formed itself, and perhaps also afterward. But it is just this unconsciously formed feature which constitutes legitimate individuality and which alone will admit of a real fusion of the composer's and the interpreter's thought. A purposed, blatant parading of the player's dear self through wilful additions of nuances, shadings, effects, and what not, is tantamount to a falsification; at best it is "playing to the galleries," charlatanism. The player should always feel convinced that he plays only what is written. To the auditor, who with his own and different intelligence follows the player's performance, the piece will appear in the light of the player's individuality. The stronger this is the more it will colour the performance, when unconsciously admixed.
Rubinstein Often Said to Me: "Just play first exactly what is written; if you have done full justice to it and then still feel like adding or changing anything, why, do so." Mind well: after you have done full justice to what is written! How few are those who fulfil this duty! I venture to prove to any one who will play for me—if he be at all worth listening to—that he does not play more than is written (as he may think), but, in fact, a good deal less than the printed page reveals. And this is one of the principal causes of misunderstanding the esoteric portion, the inherent "style" of a piece—a misunderstanding which is not always confined to amateurs—inexact reading!
The true interpretation of a piece of music results from a correct understanding of it, and this, in turn, depends solely upon scrupulously exact reading.
Learn the Language of Music, then, I repeat, through exact reading! You will then soon fathom the musical meaning of a composition and transmit it intelligibly to your listeners. Would you satisfy your curiosity as to what manner of person the author is or was at the time of writing, you may do so. But—as I said in the "Foreword"—your chief interest should centre in the "composition," not in the "composer," for only by studying his work will you be enabled to play it in style.
HOW RUBINSTEIN TAUGHT ME TO PLAY
Outside of the regular students of the Imperial Conservatory of Music at St. Petersburg, Rubinstein accepted but one pupil. The advantage and privilege to be that one pupil was mine.
I came to Rubinstein when I was sixteen years old and left him at eighteen. Since that time I have studied only by myself; for to whom could I have gone after Rubinstein? His very manner of teaching was such that it would have made any other teacher appear to me like a schoolmaster. He chose the method of indirect instruction through suggestive comparisons. He touched upon the strictly musical only upon rare occasions. In this way he wished to awaken within me the concretely musical as a parallel of his generalisations and thereby preserve my musical individuality.