Stephen Heller. Ferdinand Hiller. Adolf Henselt.
A constant succession of romantic writers of Études or small pieces stretches from that era to our own. First stands the intellectual Volkmann; next, the somewhat too dainty Kirchner, a regular album-writer, who went so far in his admiration for Schumann as to publish “New Davidsbündler” and “The New Florestan and Eusebius.” Adolf Henselt, who lived at St Petersburg, practised an extraordinary longdrawn legato technique. He is still esteemed for his tolerable F minor Concerto, and for his second and fifth Études, especially the well-known “Si oiseau j’étais.” Stephen Heller, who lived in Paris, wrote a hundred and forty-nine works, almost exclusively for the piano. He is a combination of Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and water; but we light occasionally on passages of some inspiration. His well-known Saltarellos and Tarantelles, his effective “Forellen” (Trout) Fantasia, and his excellent “Danses Bois,” are in the taste of the time. More important was his pretty idea, in the Freischütz Studies, of uniting operatic motives and étude-practice in an organic and poetic combination.
Tschaïkowski.
The lesser Romantics and Romanticists were meanwhile working diligently in Paris. A group of successful piano-composers of this class reaches down to our own day. The chief names are Fauré, Widor, Vincent d’Indy, Chabrier, César Franck, Dubois, Cécile Chaminade, Paul Lacombe. The drawing-room romance, which in Chaminade unfortunately tends too often to shallowness, exhibits often a Mendelssohnian classicism, of which dainty specimens are given in Lacombe’s Toccatina, and in the Toccata of Chaminade herself. The literature for two pianos is well illustrated in Chabrier’s Romantic Waltzes, which are unusually spirited. César Franck’s symphonic variations, serious and academic, and St Saens’ Concertos, more interesting in their effective technique than in content, stand out from the mass of orchestral piano-work.
From painting by Fritz Erler.