But in writing for the
piano Liszt certainly remembered that it was he, and not some unknown
person, who was to play these hard and showy rhapsodies, in which there
are no depths, though there are splendours. That is why Liszt is the
test rather of the virtuoso than of the interpreter, why, therefore, it
was so infinitely more important that Paderewski should have played the
Beethoven sonata as impersonally as he did than that he should have
played the Liszt sonata with so much personal abandonment. Between those
limits there seems to be contained the whole art of the pianist, and
Paderewski has attained both limits.
After his concert was over, Paderewski gave seven encores, in the midst
of an enthusiasm which recurs whenever and wherever he gives a concert.
What is the peculiar quality in this artist which acts always with the
same intoxicating effect? Is it anything quite normal in his fingers, or
is it, in the image of a brilliant and fantastic writer on music in
America, Mr. James Huneker, a soul like the soul of Belus, "the Raphael
of the piano," which, "suspended above him, like a coat of many colors,"
mesmerises the audience, while he sits motionless, not touching the
notes?
Is Paderewski after all a Belus? Is it his many coloured soul that
"magnetises our poor vertebras," in Verlaine's phrase, and not the mere
skill of his fingers? Art, it has been said, is contagious, and to
compel universal sympathy is to succeed in the last requirements of an
art.
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