Teacher and virtuoso—these mark great pianists into two groups, or at least into two temperaments; and it was this marked difference which was signalised by the appearance of Bülow and of Rubinstein. In all, the severance is perfected according to the natural aptitude and inner development. Of course over every virtuoso at a certain time there comes the wish to busy himself with teaching, but only in a small circle; but on the other hand we observe that the decision to follow the teaching profession is instantly taken by those artists who have no turn for publicity, or do not like to face the competition which to-day is more keen than ever. The extreme of the virtuoso type is seen in certain international geniuses, who continued rather the tradition of Thalberg than that of Liszt. Thalberg, in the fifties, like Henri Herz in the forties, toured in America and Brazil. Rubinstein also, in the sixties, visited America. The most travelled of all was the Irish pianist and composer Wallace, who, for the sake of his health, toured and gave concerts through Australia, New Zealand, India, South America, the United States and Mexico—long before Thalberg’s Brazilian journey. To-day a tour in America is almost a matter of course in the life of every virtuoso. Countries like France and Italy are shut off from a great international intercourse of this kind, since their concert-life, and especially their cultivation of the piano, has never duly unfolded itself. The opera is there all powerful. But England, as a hundred years ago, invites to her shores the great men of the Continent, and sends them back loaded with treasures. As London pianists Hartvigson, the pupil of Bülow, Borwick, and Dawson, stand in the front rank. Russia, formerly a colony of foreign emigrants, has now, by Anton Rubinstein’s foundations in St Petersburg, and by the like activity of his highly-esteemed brother Nicholas in Moscow, awaked to a noble concert-life, in which the rivalry of the two capitals is remarkably balanced. It was inevitable that in nearer and further states ever more numerous pupils of German or Parisian masters should settle and labour as teachers. In America, so early as the sixties and seventies, a great number of naturalised teachers was known, among whom Wolfsohn is perhaps most distinguished. His eighteen evenings of historically arranged piano-music, which he gave so early as 1877 in Chicago, are deservedly famous.
Tausig, the pupil of Liszt, who by his brilliant technique and his extraordinary sense for style was the wonder of his contemporaries, left behind him various good arrangements and compositions perhaps too obvious in their virtuosity. He was born in Warsaw and died at thirty. He would have meant to our time a teaching power of the first magnitude. The crown of piano-playing in our time has been won by Eugene d’Albert, born in 1864, a small man with giant power, a loveable person of astonishing artistic seriousness. He was a pupil of Liszt, and on him the mantle of Liszt has fallen in our generation. His greatest virtue is his classic temperament. In his memory rest safely stored the greatest works from Bach to Tausig. If he takes one out, he takes with it the sphere in which it stayed unspoilt—the style of its execution. The piece stands fast in its construction; not a phrase appears inorganic, not a rhythm accidental. The seriousness of Brahms’s Concertos, the murmuring of Chopin’s Berceuse, the Titanic power of his A minor Étude, the grace of Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne, the solemnity of Bach, move under his hand in the concert, without one taking the least from another. It is objectivity, but we do not cry out for subjectivity; it is personality, but we do not miss the rapport with eternity.
Liszt’s pupils Reisenauer and Stavenhagen endeavoured on a similar ground to play a part as more general interpreters. But chance and change played them many tricks. Others, again, had and have their special excellencies. Paderewski, idolised in England and America, is the delicate, emotional, drawing-room player; Sauer, the bravura pianist; Siloti, the interpreter of Russian piano-music; Friedheim, the Liszt-player; Karl Heymann, the graceful. Barth, the pupil of Bülow, is severe; Rosenthal, an amazing technician; Ansorge, one of the most intellectual; Gabrilowitsch, who drives the horses of Rubinstein; Vladimir von Pachmann, with all his extravagancy, at least plays Chopin’s Mazurkas with absolute faithfulness to their national character; Busoni shows great passion; Lütschg has an extraordinarily strong wrist; the miraculous child Paula Szalit transposes fugues on the spot; Josef Hofmann, once an “infant prodigy,” is now an astonishingly individualistic artist; and Eduard Risler has an inimitable soft touch. Since the triumphs of Planté, indeed, Risler is the first French pianist to achieve a universal renown. He is a pupil of the eminent Parisian master Diémer. He has discovered those last delicate nuances which lie precisely between tone and silence. His tones seem not to begin and not to cease; they are woven out of ethereal gossamer. While d’Albert plays with the whole upper body, seeks the keys and rivets them fast, breaks the sforzatos, and soothes the pianissimos; Risler is a statue at the piano, externally a Stoic; but his gliding and crossing fingers, so soon as they have struck the first chord, become the most sensitive agents of an emotional soul. Under Risler’s treatment the commonplace becomes a novelty. Out of Liszt’s sermon of St Francis to the birds he draws the last poetical breath; Beethoven he bathes in a warm brilliancy of his own; and, not to be charged with too much sweetness, he flings himself loose with the overture to the Meistersinger, so that we fancy the whole orchestra to be playing, and we have an assurance that it is not weakness, but an active artistic restraint which gives to his touch its never-to-be-forgotten delicate profundity.