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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.
He was a Pole of the Chopinesque type: and it was in spite of himself that he gave his pupil, besides the regular studies, a very thorough grounding in the classical masters, taught him something of the spirit of Schumann and Schubert, and even permitted in Ivan's repertoire such bits of Glinka and Sérov as were to be managed by the boyish hands.
And yet almost none of the comparatively few scherzos that have been written here have had any sense of the hilarious jollity that makes Beethoven's wit side-shaking. They have been rather of the Chopinesque sort, mere fantasy. To the composers deserving this generalization I recall only two important exceptions, Edgar S. Kelley and Harvey Worthington Loomis.
Nor is it so difficult to cultivate the harmonic sense, if one takes pains to hear good music often and attentively. I once met a young lady on a transatlantic steamer, who frankly confessed she could not see any beauty in certain exquisite Wagnerian and Chopinesque modulations and harmonies which I played for her on the piano.
When, as he expressed it, he was in the mood, few men could improvise more exquisitely, with a technique more Chopinesque, than this man whose orchestral work was so tremendous: so filled with the rolling grandeur, the passion, the energy, the gigantic climaxes, the seething, troubled depths, of a nature titanic in its conceptions, overpowering in their presentment.
I spent many hours at my piano, playing over old and new composers. I also wrote several little pieces in a more or less Chopinesque style, which I dedicated to her. And so the weeks and months went by. Often words of love trembled on my lips, but I dared not utter them, because I knew they would have to be followed by other words which I had not the courage to frame.
But help comes to us from elsewhere. Liszt explained Chopin's tempo rubato in a very poetical and graphic manner to his pupil the Russian pianist Neilissow: "Look at these trees!" he said, "the wind plays in the leaves, stirs up life among them, the tree remains the same, that is Chopinesque rubato." But how did the composer himself describe it?
These pieces, too, might seem to have been written in order to be played in noble salons lit by massive candelabra, to countesses with bare shoulders. The twenty-four preludes Opus 11, for instance, are full of Chopinesque turns, of Chopinesque morbidezza, of Chopinesque melodies. The harmonic scheme rarely transgresses the limits which Chopin set himself.
And yet, the compositions of the middle period, the one that follows immediately the early, immature, Chopinesque period, are scarcely less rich and refined, scarcely less important. No doubt the influence of Scriabine's masters, though considerably on the wane, is still evident. The "Poème satanique" refines on Liszt.
But let us not tarry too long in the treacherous atmosphere of this Capua- -it bewitches and unmans. Still, they need not be despised. The melody of the C minor portion of the first is very expressive, and the second has in the C sharp minor portion the peculiar Chopinesque flebile dolcezza.
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