Lisztian anecdotes and eyewitness accounts has been my bed reading over the last few days, and my latest find is a reminiscence by British pianist Charles Hallé (1819-1895) about his days in Paris which I thoroughly enjoyed, especially since it contains both comparative and descriptive remarks. I have read excerpts from his tale before, but never the complete text; the relevant portion of which is reproduced below and which begins in late 1836 as he arrived in Paris by diligence from Darmstadt.
TEXT
Arrived in Paris, and settled in a small German
hotel in the Eue Vivienne, I began after a few days
to deliver the letters of introduction I had brought
with me, one of my first visits being to Kalkbrenner.
Kalkbrenner and Hummel were at that time con-
sidered the greatest pianists, and even Chopin had
come to Paris a few years before to learn from Kalk-
brenner. I therefore approached him with considerable
trepidation, and great was my disappoint-
ment when he told me that he no longer took pupils.
He, however, kindly invited me to play something,
to which he listened carefully, and then made some
unpleasant remarks and advised me to take lessons
from one of his pupils. As I was about to leave him
he offered to play for me, saying that it might prove
useful to me to hear him. I accepted eagerly and
was full of expectation, when he sat down and played
a new piece of his composition, entitled ’ Le Fou,’
one of the most reasonable and dullest pieces ever
perpetrated. I admired the elegance and neatness
of his scales and legato playing, but was not other-
wise struck by his performance, having expected
more, and wondering at some wrong notes which I
had detected.
I did not at once follow his advice with regard to
the teacher he had recommended, and two or three
days later I received an invitation to dinner from
the banker Mallet, to whom an uncle of mine,
Harkort of Leipzig, had recommended me, and found
myself sitting beside Chopin. The same evening I
heard him play, and was fascinated beyond expres-
sion. It seemed to me as if I had got into another
world, and all thought of Kalkbrenner was driven
out of my mind. I sat entranced, filled with won-
derment, and if the room had suddenly been peopled
with fairies, I should not have been astonished. The
marvellous charm, the poetry and originality, the
perfect freedom and absolute lucidity of Chopin’s
playing at that time cannot be described. It was
perfection in every sense. He seemed to be pleased
with the evident impression he had produced, for I
could only stammer a few broken words of admira-
tion, and he played again and again, each time
revealing new beauties, until I could have dropped
on my knees to worship him. I returned home in a
state of complete bewilderment, and it was only the
next day that I began to realise what was before me
how much study and hard work, in order to get
that technical command over the keyboard, without
which I knew now that no good result could be
achieved. Strange to say, the idea of taking lessons
did not occur to me then ; I felt that what I had to
do could be done without a master ; lessons of style
might be more useful later on. I shut myself up and
practised twelve hours and more a day, until one day
my left hand was swollen to about twice its usual
size, causing me considerable anxiety. For some
months I hardly ever left my rooms, and only when
I received invitations to houses where I knew I
should meet, and perhaps hear, Chopin. There
were not many of them in Paris, for Chopin, impelled
by growing weakness, began even then to lead a very
retired life. He used still to visit principally Count
de Perthuis, the banker August Leo, Mallet, and a
few other houses. Fortunately for me I had been
introduced by letters to the above three gentlemen,
and enjoyed the privilege of being invited to their
’ reunions intimes,’ when Chopin, who avoided large
parties, was to be present. With greater familiarity
my admiration increased, for I learned to appreciate
what before had principally dazzled me. In personal
appearance he was also most striking, his clear-cut
features, diaphanous complexion, beautiful brown
waving hair, the fragility of his frame, his aristocratic
bearing, and his princelike manners, singling him
out, and making one feel the presence of a superior
man. Meeting often, we came into closer contact,
and although at that time I never exhibited what
small powers I might possess as a pianist, he knew
me as an ardent student, and divined that I not
merely admired but understood him. With time our
acquaintance developed into real friendship, which I
am happy to say remained undisturbed until the end
of his too short life.
From the year 1830 to 1848, a period during
which he created many of his most remarkable works,
it was my good fortune to hear him play them succes-
sively as they appeared, and each seemed a new reve-
lation. It is impossible at the present day, when
Chopin’s music has become the property of every
schoolgirl, when there is hardly a concert-programme
without his name, to realise the impression which
these works produced upon musicians when they first
appeared, and especially when they were played by
himself. I can confidently assert that nobody has
ever been able to reproduce them as they sounded
under his magical fingers. In listening to him you
lost all power of analysis ; you did not for a moment
think how perfect was his execution of this or that
difficulty ; you listened, as it were, to the improvisa-
tion of a poem and were under the charm as long as
it lasted. A remarkable feature of his playing was
the entire freedom with which he treated the rhythm,
but which appeared so natural that for years it had
never struck me. It must have been in 1845 or 1846
that I once ventured to observe to him that most of
his mazurkas (those dainty jewels), when played by
himself, appeared to be written, not in 3-4, but in
4-4 time, the result of his dwelling so much longer
on the first note in the bar. He denied it strenuously,
until I made him play one of them and counted
audibly four in the bar, which fitted perfectly.
Then he laughed and explained that it was the
national character of the dance which created the
oddity. The more remarkable fact was that you
received the impression of a 3-4 rhythm whilst listen-
ing to common time. Of course this was not the case
with every mazurka, but with many. I understood
later how ill-advised I had been to make that observa-
tion to him and how well disposed towards me he
must have been to have taken it with such good
humour, for a similar remark made by Meyerbeer,
perhaps in a somewhat supercilious manner, on
another occasion, led to a serious quarrel, and I
believe Chopin never forgave him. Any deliberate
misreading of his compositions he resented sharply.
I remember how, on one occasion, in his gentle way
he laid his hand upon my shoulder, saying how un-
happy he felt, because he had heard his ’ Grande
Polonaise,’ in A flat, jouée vite [played fast]
thereby destroying all the grandeur, the majesty,
of this noble inspiration. Poor Chopin must be rolling
round and round in his grave nowadays, for this
misreading has unfortunately become the fashion.
I may as well continue to speak about Chopin
here and take up the thread of my narrative later on,
all the more as it will fill little space. His public
appearances were few and far between, and consisted
in concerts given in the ’ Salon Pleyel,’ when he pro-
duced his newest compositions, the programme open-
ing, I think, invariably with Mozart’s Trio in E
major, the only work by another composer which I
ever heard him play. He was so entirely identified
with his own music that it occurred to no one to
inquire or even to wish to know how he would play,
say. Beethoven’s sonatas. If he was well acquainted
with them remains a moot point. One day, long
after I had emerged from my retirement and achieved
some notoriety as a pianist, I played at his request,
in his own room, the sonata in E flat, Op. 30, No. 3,
and after the finale he said that it was the first time
he had liked it, that it had always appeared to him
very vulgar. I felt flattered, but was much struck
by the oddity of the remark. In another direction,
he did not admire Mendelssohn’s ’ Lieder ohne Worte,’
with the exception of the first of the first book, which
he called a song of the purest virginal beauty. When
one reflects on the wonderful originality of his genius,
the striking difference of his works from any written
before him, without making comparison as to their
respective worth, one feels it natural that he should
have lived in his own world, and that other music, even
the very greatest, did not touch all his sympathies.
When I first knew him he was still a charming
companion, gay and full of life; a few years later his
bodily decline began ; he grew weaker and weaker,
to such a degree, that when we dined together at
Leo’s or at other friends’ houses, he had to be carried
upstairs, even to the first floor. His spirits and his
mental energy remained, nevertheless, unimpaired,
a proof of which he gave one evening, when, after
having written his sonata for piano and violoncello,
he invited a small circle of friends to hear it played by
himself and Franchomme. On our arrival we found
him hardly able to move, bent like a half opened pen-
knife, and evidently in great pain. We entreated him to
postpone the performance, but he would not hear of
it ; soon he sat down to the piano, and as he warmed
to his work, his body gradually resumed its normal
position, the spirit having mastered the flesh. In
spite of his declining physical strength, the charm of
his playing remained as great as ever, some of the
new readings he was compelled to adopt having a
peculiar interest. Thus at the last public concert he
gave in Paris, at the end of the year 1847 or the
beginning of 1848, he played the latter part of his
‘Barcarolle,’ from the point where it demands the
utmost energy, in the most opposite style, pianissimo,
but with such wonderful nuances, that one remained
in doubt if this new reading were not preferable to the
accustomed one. Nobody but Chopin could have
accomplished such a feat. The last time I saw him
was in England ; he had come to London a few weeks
after my arrival there in 1848, and I had the privilege
and the happiness to hear him several times at Mrs.
Sartoris’s and Henry F. Chorley’s houses. The admi-
ration which he elicited knew no bounds ; there w r e
heard for the first time the beautiful valses, Op. 62,
recently composed and published, which since have
become the most popular of his smaller pieces. I had
the pleasure afterwards to welcome him to Manchester,
where he played at one of the concerts of the society
called the Gentlemen’s Concerts in the month of
August. It was then painfully evident that his end
was drawing near; a year later he was no more.
To return to my own experiences in 1836, I have
to relate that a few days after having made the
acquaintance of Chopin, I heard Liszt for the first time
at one of his concerts, and went home with a feeling
of thorough dejection. Such marvels of executive
skill and power I could never have imagined. He
was a giant, and Rubinstein spoke the truth when, at
the time when his own triumphs were greatest, he
said that, in comparison with Liszt, all other pianists
were children. Chopin carried you with him into a
dreamland, in which you would have liked to dwell
for ever ; Liszt was all sunshine and dazzling splendour,
subjugating his hearers with a power that none could
withstand. For him there were no difficulties of
execution, the most incredible seeming child’s play
under his fingers. One of the transcendent merits of
his playing was the crystal-like clearness which never
failed for a moment even in the most complicated
and, to anybody else, impossible passages ; it was as
if he had photographed them in their minutest detail
upon the ear of his listener. The power he drew
from his instrument was such as I have never heard
since, but never harsh, never suggesting ’ thumping.’
His daring was as extraordinary as his talent. At
an orchestral concert given by him and conducted by
Berlioz, the ‘March au Supplice,’ from the hitter’s
’ Symphonie Fantastique,’ that most gorgeously instru-
mented piece, was performed, at the conclusion of
which Liszt sat down and played his own arrangement,
for the piano alone, of the same movement, with an
effect even surpassing that of the full orchestra, and
creating an indescribable furore. The feat had been
duly announced in the programme beforehand, a
proof of his indomitable courage.
If, before his marvellous execution, one had only
to bow in admiration, there were some peculiarities
of style, or rather of musicianship, which could not
be approved. I was very young and most impres-
sionable, but still his tacking on the finale of the
C sharp minor sonata (Beethoven’s) to the variations
of the one in A flat, Op. 26, gave me a shock, in spite
of the perfection with which both movements were
played. Another example : he was fond at that time
of playing in public his arrangement for piano of the
’ Scherzo,’ ’ The Storm,’ and the finale from Beet-
hoven’s ’ Pastoral Symphony ; '‘The Storm’ was simply
magnificent, and no orchestra could produce a more
telling or effective tempest. The peculiarity, the
oddity, of the performance, consisted in his playing
the first eight bars of the ’ Scherzo ’ rather quicker
than they are usually taken, and the following eight
bars, the B major phrase, in a slow andante time ;
‘ce sont les vieux’, he said to me on one occasion.
With Thalberg there came a new sensation in the
same year. Totally unlike in style to either Chopin
or Liszt, he was admirable and unimpeachable in his
own way. His performances were wonderfully
finished and accurate, giving the impression that a
wrong note was an impossibility. His tone was
round and beautiful, the clearness of his passage-
playing crystal-like, and he had brought to the
utmost perfection the method, identified with his
name, of making a melody stand out distinctly through
a maze of brilliant passages. He did not appeal to
the emotions, except those of wonder, for his playing
was statuesque ; cold, but beautiful and so masterly
that it was said of him with reason he would play
with the same care and finish if roused out of the
deepest sleep in the middle of the night. He created
a great sensation in Paris, and became the idol of the
public, principally, perhaps, because it was felt that
he could be imitated, even successfully, which with
Chopin and Liszt was out of the question.
It’s at least clear both Chopin and Liszt were romantic pianists with great imagination and evocation in their playing, while Thalberg comes across more as someone in line with Michelangeli, Malcuzynski, etc. Tausig apparently was a bit like that too.
I think he was very caught up with the competitive climate and all attention he was receiving at the time, even having to hold bi-weekly receptions for several hours for the scores of people who just came and wanted to meet him. There’s a much later letter where he writes that he “asks for simplicity, sincerity, and truth in a work of art, and in its artistic interpretation, in whatever style it may be” - which seems a bit at odds with what you read about him in the 30s and 40s, where effect and impact appears to have been the order of the day.
Generic, pointless.