The great third Scherzo was played with grandeur, and it is in
the Scherzos, perhaps, that Chopin has built his most enduring work. The
Barcarolle, which I have heard played as if it were Niagara and not
Venice, was given with perfect quietude, and the second Mazurka of Op.
50 had that boldness of attack, with an almost stealthy intimacy in its
secret rhythms, which in Pachmann's playing, and in his playing alone,
gives you the dance and the reverie together. But I am not sure that the
Etudes are not, in a very personal sense, what is most essential in
Chopin, and I am not sure that Pachmann is not at his best in the
playing of the Etudes.
Other pianists think, perhaps, but Pachmann plays. As he plays he is
like one hypnotised by the music; he sees it beckoning, smiles to it,
lifts his finger on a pause that you may listen to the note which is
coming. This apparent hypnotism is really a fixed and continuous act of
creation; there is not a note which he does not create for himself, to
which he does not give his own vitality, the sensitive and yet
controlling vitality of the medium. In playing the Bach he had the music
before him that he might be wholly free from even the slight strain
which comes from the almost unconscious act of remembering.
Pages:
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203