It is difficult to imagine that anyone since
Liszt has had so complete a mastery of every capacity of the piano, and
Liszt, though probably even more brilliant, can hardly be imagined with
this particular kind of charm. His playing is in the true sense an
inspiration; he plays nothing as if he had learned it with toil, but as
if it had come to him out of a kind of fiery meditation. Even his
thunder is not so much a thing specially cultivated for its own sake as
a single prominent detail in a vast accomplishment. When he plays, the
piano seems to become thrillingly and tempestuously alive, as if brother
met brother in some joyous triumph. He collaborates with it, urging it
to battle like a war-horse. And the quality of the sonority which he
gets out of it is unlike that which is teased or provoked from the
instrument by any other player. Fierce exuberant delight wakens under
his fingers, in which there is a sensitiveness almost impatient, and
under his feet, which are as busy as an organist's with the pedals. The
music leaps like pouring water, flood after flood of sound, caught
together and flung onward by a central energy. The separate notes are
never picked out and made into ornaments; all the expression goes to
passage after passage, realised acutely in their sequence.
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