United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Foreign pianists get engagements long before their managers in America ever hear them. In the present state of affairs, if an American pianist were to have the ability of three Liszts and three Rubinsteins in one person, he could only hope for meager reward if he did not have a great European reputation behind him. "The condition is absurd and regrettable, but nevertheless true.
The Liszts, father and son, often went to Eisenstadt, where the count lived; there they rubbed elbows with Cherubini and Hummel, a pupil of Mozart. Franz took to music from his earliest childhood. When about five years old he was asked what he would like to do. "Learn the piano," said the little fellow.
One heard the names of Chaminade, Augusta Holmes, Ethel Smyth. Why had there been no female Beethovens, Liszts, or even Chopins? The reason, asserted a middle-aged man, was that women's emotions were too thoroughly instinctive to be projected in the form of first-class music, which was, in fine, emotion analyzed, compressed within the limits of fixed rules, expressed by series of arbitrary signs.
Is it artistic? Is it musical? Would it not be better to train him to play a piece which he could comprehend and which he could express in his own way? "Of course I am not speaking now of the boy Mozarts, the boy Liszts or other freaks of nature, but of the children who by machine-made methods are made to do things which nature never intended that they should do.
Word Of The Day