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It was a bit from Tschaikovsky's Pathetic Symphony the adagio movement. It was dark in the shop, with the velvety darkness old places get on a sunny day, and on the other side of the street lay the sunshine like gold. He sat, le vieux, in his chair away from the light, for his eyes were bad, and listened. And I played well, for I was playing for the greatest price I had ever commanded!"
You know in many of the celebrated ballets, Tschaikovsky's for instance, there occur beautiful and difficult solos for the violin. They call for an artist of the first rank, and Auer was accustomed to play them in Petrograd. In Russia it was considered a decided honor to be called upon to play one of those ballet solos; but in London it was looked on as something quite incidental.
As he worked, Cesar whistled a Russian melody, half sad, half cheerful, and Felix paused midway in the lighting of his cigar. It was the opening theme in the second movement of Tschaikovsky's Fourth Symphony; and Cesar's rendition of it was not only true to pitch but he managed to introduce certain nuances that to Felix proclaimed the born musician.
Hearing it after Tschaikovsky's charming, but weak, setting of Eugen Onegin, the forthright and characteristic qualities of Moussorgsky are set in higher relief. All the old rhetoric goes by the board, and sentiment, in our sense of the word, is not drawn upon too heavily. Stravinsky is a new man not to be slighted, nor are Kodaly and Bartok.
He always played the Chanson Triste when he was sad and lonely. He had been nearly seven when his mother died, and he remembered her vividly. She had so loved Tschaikovsky's music, and this piece especially. He had played it to her from ear then the afternoon she lay dying, and for him, as for them all, it was indissolubly connected with her memory.
Which of the great concertos do I prefer? That is a difficult question to answer off-hand. But I can easily tell you which I like least. It is the Tschaikovsky* violin concerto I would not exchange the first ten measures of Vieuxtemps's Fourth concerto for the whole of Tschaikovsky's, that is from the musical point of view.
To them, a few short years ago, a concert on the Sabbath would have seemed a sacrilege. He could almost hear from somewhere the echo of "Abide With Me." But over this memory of a song rose now the surging music of Tschaikovsky's "Pathetique." And the yearnings and fierce hungers in this tumultuous music swept all the hymns from Roger's mind.
It means to me complete control of the fingerboard, a being at home in every position, absolute sureness of fingering, absolute equality of tone under all circumstances. I remember Ysaye playing Tschaikovsky's Sérénade Mélancolique, and using a fingering for certain passages which I liked very much.
"What's that you are whistling?" he inquired; and Cesar smiled. "Tschaikovsky's Fourt' Symphony," he replied, and then he reached around to his hip-pocket. "See; I am got music." He handed a paper-covered miniature score to Geigermann, who opened it at random. "Ha!" Felix exclaimed as his eye lit on a familiar phrase in the last movement.
He no longer took the slightest interest in the pros and cons of his future in the Colony, and when, at last, he heard the distant tones of Tschaikovsky's Chanson Triste as they ascended the stairs he came suddenly to a determination. She was sitting at the grand piano in the back part of the room.
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