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He then begged Chopin to study three years with him only three! but Elsner in an earnest letter dissuaded his pupil from making any experiments that might hurt his originality of style. Chopin actually attended the class of Kalkbrenner but soon quit, for he had nothing to learn of the pompous, penurious pianist.
I had adopted the gestures of the young man of whom I have spoken, and frequently regretted that there were no strangers present to see me play. Soon, however, I began to realise that Liszt and Kalkbrenner were beyond me, and that I should never overtake Katenka. At that period Monte Cristo and Taine's works had just appeared, while I also revelled in stories by Sue, Dumas, and Paul de Kock.
After the death of Mendelssohn some foreign musicians living in Paris proposed to send a letter of condolence to Mrs. Mendelssohn. One part of the letter ran thus: "May it be permitted to us, German artists, far from our country, to offer," &c. The signatures to it were: Rosenhain, Kalkbrenner, Panofka, Heller, Halle, Pixis, and Wolff.
They do, perhaps, in their elegant form, but certainly not in their spirit. The frivolous aristocratic circles that heard Chopin could never have comprehended the depth of his emotional life. The pianists for them, the real drawing-room composers were Kalkbrenner, and Field, and Thalberg, with their operatic fantasias.
Far more like the genuine expression of the feeling of the great artist was his utterance, just before he died, to Kalkbrenner: "I have only just learned in my old age how to use the wind-instruments; and now that I do understand them, I must leave the world."
Kalkbrenner remarked he had the style of Cramer and the touch of Field. He proposed that Chopin should study three years with him, and he would then become a great virtuoso. Of course the young artist might have learned something-on the mechanical side, but at the risk of injuring the originality and style of his playing. His old friend and teacher Elsner, kept him from doing this.
The E minor Concerto is dedicated to Frederick Kalkbrenner, the F minor to the Comtesse Deiphine Potocka. The latter dedication demonstrates that he could forget his only "ideal" in the presence of the charming Potocka! Ah! these vibratile and versatile Poles! Robert Schumann, it is related, shook his head wearily when his early work was mentioned.
King of the romanticists, Heine, poet and novelist; De Musset, Flaubert, Zola, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Baudelaire, Ary Scheffer, Mérimée, Gautier, Berlioz, Balzac, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Hiller, Nourrit, to mention a few. Liszt was there too, and George Sand, Mendelssohn and Kalkbrenner. Chopin called on the last named, who was considered the first pianist of the day, and played for him.
Such has been the case with Arabella Goddard, the famous pianist. Born near St. Malo, in 1838, she played in her native place at the age of four. At six she was studying with Kalkbrenner at Paris. At eight she played before Queen Victoria, and published six piano waltzes. Among her maturer works are an excellent ballade and several other piano selections.
In 1848 Billet, Osborne, Kalkbrenner, Halle, and especially Thalberg, who came about the same time across the channel, caused more curiosity.
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