Pachmann is less showy with his fingers than any other pianist; his
hands are stealthy acrobats, going quietly about their difficult
business. They talk with the piano and the piano answers them. All that
violence cannot do with the notes of the instrument, he does. His art
begins where violence leaves off; that is why he can give you fortissimo
without hurting the nerves of a single string; that is why he can play a
run as if every note had its meaning. To the others a run is a flourish,
a tassel hung on for display, a thing extra; when Pachmann plays a run
you realise that it may have its own legitimate sparkle of gay life.
With him every note lives, has its own body and its own soul, and that
is why it is worth hearing him play even trivial music like
Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" or meaningless music like Taubert's Waltz:
he creates a beauty out of sound itself and a beauty which is at the
root of music. There are moments when a single chord seems to say in
itself everything that music has to say. That is the moment in which
everything but sound is annihilated, the moment of ecstasy; and it is of
such moments that Pachmann is the poet.
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