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When Liszt and Thalberg were in possession of the concert platform, they occupied the attention of cartoonists as fully as Paderewski at a later date. Liszt, his hair floating wildly, was represented as darting through the air on wide-stretched pinions with keyboards attached a play on Flügel, the German for grand piano.
A German, like the eminent Liszt and the great Mendelssohn, and Steibelt, and Dussek, and Meyer, and Mozart, and Doelher, and Thalberg, and Dreschok, and Hiller, and Leopold Hertz, Woertz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck and all Germans, generally speaking.
Was it not Heine who called "Thalberg a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a sibyl, and Doehler a pianist"? The limpidity, the smoothness and ease of Chopin's playing were, after all, on the physical plane. It was the poetic melancholy, the grandeur, above all the imaginative lift, that were more in evidence than mere sensuous sweetness.
During his travels Thalberg composed a concerto for piano and orchestra, to play at his concerts. But this species of composition was so obviously unsuited to his abilities that he quickly forsook it, and thenceforward devoted his efforts exclusively to the instrument of which he was such an eminent master. A more extensive ambition had been rebuked in more ways than one.
Grandes variations de bravoure sur la marche des Puritains de Bellini, composees pour le concert de Madame la Princesse Belgiojoso au benefice des pauvres, par M.M. Liszt, Thalberg, Pixis, H. Herz, Czerny, et Chopin. This co-operative undertaking was set on foot by the Princess, and was one of her many schemes to procure money for her poor exiled countrymen.
Thalberg had but little sympathy with the dreamy romanticism which found such splendid exponents, while he was yet in his early youth, in Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt. Imagination in its higher functions he seemed to lack.
If he was surpassed by Thalberg in richness of sound, he surpassed Thalberg by a variety of tone of which the redoubtable Viennese player had no dream. He had his delicate, light, freakish moods in which he might stand for another Chopin in qualities of fancy, sentiment, and faëry brilliancy.
Of his execution we need say nothing further than that it is the most finished we have ever heard. He has neither the ponderosity nor the digital power of a Mendelssohn, a Thalberg, or Liszt; consequently his execution would appear less effective in a large room; but as a chamber pianist he stands unrivalled.
And the impression of coldness was largely due, doubtless, to the tranquillity and propriety of his appearance and manner. The most generally popular of his successors at the piano in this country was undoubtedly Gottschalk, who was here quite as early as Thalberg, whose fame eclipsed all others. Upon his arrival Gottschalk played privately at a small party.
The artist's ambition was stirred to the quick; he could not sleep at night with the thought of this victorious rival who was snatching his laurels, and he hastened back to Paris to meet Thalberg on his own ground. The latter, however, had already left Paris, and Liszt only felt the ground-swell of the storm he had raised.
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