The Muse Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...world has labored and groaned this many years. All of these three books of Leschetitzky are by his lady assistants, be it observed, and nothing is cleverer than the way in which the astute old cynic gives each one of the three the authorization of being "the one and only." This is the social art which his matrimonial sequences also illustrate, for the successive Mrs. Leschetitzkys all continue to live upon good terms with each other and with the master himself. This indicates genius somewhere along the line. The Leschetitzky boom began twenty years ago, when the interesting and impulsive Essipoff gave us the first illustration of her powers. Her specialty was musical playing, as distinguished from the bravoura playing which all great artists at that time were supposed to do. The summum bonum of a pianist of that day was a Liszt cadenza--a fiery and rattling sequence of breack-neck chords and chromatics, pedaled to confuse the ear, and climaxed at last to astonish and split the ears of the groundlings. It was a famous trick, and it pleased. It is common now. Any good virtuoso is equal to it. The second chapter of the Leschetitzky apotheosis upon the musical Parnassus opened with the magical success of Paderewski, in 1891. Since that time all, or nearly all, good pianists have gone to him to mature their repertory, and incidentally to reform their individual crudities, which up to the moment of his instruction had prevented their playing really well. Thus went Mme. Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, th ambitious Mark Hamburg, Gabrilowitsch, and several others reviewed their repertory with the Vienna master. There have been many good pianists who never studied with Leschetitzky. The young Dohnanyr, for instance, one of the most charming of the lot, has never...