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"Engaged to perform Chopin's second concerto in public, the orchestral parts not being obtainable, Filtsch, nothing dismayed, wrote out the whole of them from memory." Another short-lived great talent was Paul Gunsberg. "This young man," Madame Dubois informed me, "was endowed with an extraordinary organisation. Chopin had made of him an admirable executant.
As we have seen in the chapters treating of Chopin's first years in Paris, there was then a goodly sprinkling of musicians among his associates I use the word "associates" advisedly, for many of them could not truly be called friends. When he was once firmly settled, artistically and socially, not a few of these early acquaintances lapsed.
Exhibitions of temper like this were no doubt rare, indeed, hardly ever occurred except in his intercourse with familiars and, more especially, fellow-countrymen sometimes also with pupils. In passing I may remark that Chopin's Polish vocabulary was much less choice than his French one. As a rule, Chopin's manners were very refined and aristocratic, Mr. Halle thinks they were too much so.
And yet, says Liszt of Chopin: His sybaritism of purity, his apprehension of what was commonplace, were such that even in "Don Giovanni," even in this immortal chef-d'oeuvre, he discovered passages the presence of which we have heard him regret. His worship of Mozart was not thereby diminished, but as it were saddened. The composer who next to Mozart stood highest in Chopin's esteem was Bach.
The thinness of much of his work, the feebleness of the overture to "Benvenuto Cellini," for instance, results from his inexperience in the new tongue. But he had not to practise long. It was not long before he became the teacher of his very contemporaries. Wagner owes as much to Berlioz's instrumentation as he owes to Chopin's harmony. But for the new men, he is more than teacher.
But if this is a marked specimen of Riemann, examine his reading of the phrase wherein Chopin's triple rhythm is supplanted by duple. Thus Von Bulow and who will dare cavil? The difference is more imaginary than real, for the stems of the accented notes give us the binary metre. But the illustration serves to show how Dr. Riemann is disposed to refine upon the gold of Chopin.
As regards grouping, Riemann follows Von Bulow, but places his accents differently. The canvas is Chopin's largest for the idea and its treatment are on a vastly grander scale than any contained in the two concertos.
But strange as Chopin's style of playing was he thinks that its peculiarities are generally exaggerated. The Parisians said of Rubinstein's playing of compositions of Chopin: "Ce n'est pas ca!" Mr. Halle himself thinks that Rubinstein's rendering of Chopin is clever, but not Chopinesque. Nor do Von Bulow's readings come near the original.
Chopin's love for George Sand was not instantaneous like that of Romeo for Juliet. Karasowski remembers having read in one of those letters of the composer which perished in 1863: "Yesterday I met George Sand...; she made a very disagreeable impression upon me." Hiller in his Open Letter to Franz Liszt writes:
But he loved society, and made little use of his sanctuary except to give lessons in it. Although George Sand speaks only of a salon, Chopin's official residence, as we may call it, consisted of several rooms. They were elegantly furnished and always adorned with flowers for he loved le luxe and had the coquetterie des appartements.
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