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Updated: June 16, 2025
Pianists have always been too much in the habit of looking at their art from purely technical or mechanical points of view. They looked for mere five-finger exercises in Chopin's études, and finding at the same time an abundance of musical ideas, they were surprised.
When he heard Chopin play in after-years, however, he confessed the fascination of the performance, and bewailed his own incapacity to produce such effects in execution, though himself one of the greatest pianists in the world.
As a mere child he had formed the habit of mimicking and caricaturing pianists and other distinguished men. Liszt often suffered from this mischievous habit, but he did not complain, and even seemed to enjoy it. Of Chopin's wit, two specimens may be cited. A rich Parisian one day invited him to dinner, with the intention of getting him to entertain the guests afterward.
Pianists of considerable reputation often take advantage of this lack of discrimination on the part of piano-recital audiences, which, above all the other audiences, seem peculiarly incapable of judging correctly the musical value of a performance.
Classical pianists pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in fantasias rather than concertos, and who play such tricks with the keyboards, that the performances have much more of the character of legerdemain than of art, arrive by scores; violinists, violoncellists, professors of the trombone, of the ophicleide, of the bassoon, of every unwieldy and unmanageable instrument in fact, are particularly abundant; and perhaps the most popular of all are the particularly clever gentlemen who, by dint of a dozen years' or so unremitting practice, have succeeded in making one instrument sound like another.
And Diaz's gift was now such that there appeared to intervene nothing between his conception of the music and the strings of the piano, so perfected was the mechanism. Difficulties had ceased to exist. The performance of some pianists is so wonderful that it seems as if they were crossing Niagara on a tight-rope, and you tremble lest they should fall off. It was not so with Diaz.
So great is the number of these wandering Italian pianists, that their condition has attracted the attention of their more wealthy countrymen, who, in conjunction with a party of benevolent English gentlemen, have set on foot an association for the express purpose of imparting instruction to poor Italians of all grades, of whom the vagabond musicians form the largest section.
They hang their drawing-rooms with cheap prints instead of water- colours, and go to the photographers instead of the portrait-painter. If you can design something to advertise mustard or cocoa you may make a little money, but not by pure art! It's as dead as the ancient Greeks. This is a commercial age. Music's as bad. Your pianists are glad to take posts to play at the cinemas!
"I have heard a number of the young pianists here," I remarked, "and they all play with very little finger action with fingers close to the keys. Do you advocate this?" "Do not forget that for centuries England has been a country of organists; without doubt organ playing has had some effect on the piano touch.
Leschetizky teaches arched hand position, with rounded fingers, and all who have come under his instruction advocate this form. It is the accepted position for passage playing. A few pianists, notably Alfred Cortôt and Tina Lerner, play their passage work with flat fingers, but this, in Miss Lerner's case, is doubtless caused by the small size of the hand.
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