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Bachaus testifies he seldom works for velocity, saying that if he masters the passage he can play it at any required tempo. "I never work for velocity as some do," he remarks. "I seldom practise fast, for it interferes with clearness. I prefer to play more slowly, giving the greatest attention to clearness and good tone. By pursuing this course I find that when I need velocity I have it."
Of course his performance aroused immense enthusiasm; there was no end of applause and cheering, and then came a huge laurel wreath. I mentioned this episode to Mr. Bachaus a few days later. "I first played the Brahms Concerto in Vienna under Hans Richter; he had counseled me to study the work. The Americans are beginning to admire and appreciate Brahms; he ought to have a great vogue here.
Bachaus studied for nine years with Alois Reckendorf, a Moravian teacher who was connected with the Leipsic Conservatory for more than thirty years. Reckendorf had been a student of science and philosophy at the Vienna and the Heidelberg Universities and was an earnest musician and teacher with theories of his own.
Speaking of the action of fingers, Mr. Bachaus continued: "Why, yes, I raise my fingers whenever and wherever necessary no more. Do you know Breithaupt? As for the metronome, I approve of it to cultivate the sense of rhythm in those who are lacking in this particular sense.
He took an especial interest in Bachaus and was his only teacher with the exception of one year spent with d'Albert and "three lessons with Siloti." Although Bachaus commenced playing when he was eight years old he feels that his professional début was made in London in June, 1901, when he played the tremendously difficult Brahms-Paganini Variations.
In 1905, when Bachaus was only twenty-one, he won the famous Rubinstein Prize at Paris. This consists of 5000 francs offered every five years to young men between the ages of twenty and twenty-six. "It is somewhat surprising how very little difference exists between the material used in piano teaching to-day and that employed forty or fifty years ago.
Contrasted with a type of this kind may be mentioned such men as Sauer, Rachmaninov, d'Albert, Paderewski, Godowsky, Bachaus, Rosenthal, Pauer, Joseffy, Stojowski, Scharwenka, Gabrilowitsch, Hofmann, Bauer, Lhévinne, to say nothing of the ladies, Bloomfield-Zeisler, Carreño, Goodson, et al., many of whom are intellectual giants.
Bachaus gave soon afterward with the New York Symphony, I was reminded of a memorable event which occurred during my student days in Berlin. It was a special concert, at which the honored guest and soloist was the great Brahms himself. Von Bülow conducted the orchestra, and Brahms played his second Concerto.
The point which most concerns us is: How shall one practise so as to make the most of the time and accomplish the best results? What études, if any, shall we use, and what technical material is the most useful and effectual? Wilhelm Bachaus, whose consummate technic we have so often admired, says: "I am old-fashioned enough to still believe in scales and arpeggios.
The piano-playing machine may easily boast of a mechanism as wonderful as that of a Liszt, a d'Albert or a Bachaus, but it can no more claim personality than the typewriter upon which this article is being written can claim to reproduce the individuality which characterizes the handwriting of myriads of different persons. Personality, then, is the virtuoso's one great unassailable stronghold.
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