For an interesting and closely observed description of MacDowell’s technical peculiarities as a piano player I am indebted to his friend and pupil, Mr. T.P.  Currier, who had followed MacDowell’s career as a pianist from the time of his first public appearance in Boston: 

“[His finger velocity] was at that time [in 1888] the most striking characteristic of his playing,” says Mr. Currier.  “For him, too, it was a mere bagatelle.  He took to prestissimo like a duck to water.  He could, in fact, play fast more easily than he could slowly.  One of his ever-present fears was that in performance his fingers would run away with him.  And many hours were spent in endeavours to control such an embarrassing tendency.  This extraordinary velocity, acquired in the Paris Conservatory, and from his friend and teacher, Carl Heymann, of Frankfort, invariably set his listeners agape, and was always one of the chief sensations at his concerts.

“But for this finger speeding and for his other technical acquirements as well, MacDowell cared little, except as they furthered his one absorbing aim.  He was heart and soul a composer, and to be able to play his own music as he heard it in his inner ear was his single spur to practice.  From the time of his complete immersion in composition, his ideas of pianistic effects, of tone colour, gradually led him farther and farther away from conventional pianism.  Scales and arpeggios, as commonly rendered, had no longer interest or charm for him.  He cared for finger passages only when they could be made to suggest what he wanted them to suggest in his own colour-scheme.  With his peculiar touch and facility at command, he rejoiced in turning such passages into streams and swirls of tone, marked with strong accents and coloured with vivid, dynamic contrasts.

“That his passage playing rarely sounded clean and pure—­like that of a Rosenthal—­was due not only to his musical predilections, but to his hand formation as well.  His hand was broad and rather thick-set, and tremendously muscular.  It would not bend back at the knuckles; and the fingers also had no well-defined knuckle movement.  It appears, therefore, that he could not, if he would, have succeeded on more conventional technical lines.  Gradually he developed great strength and intense activity in the middle joints, which enabled him to play with a very close, often overlapping, touch, and to maintain extremely rapid tempi in legato or staccato with perfect ease and little fatigue.  With this combination of velocity and close touch, it was a slight matter to produce those pianistic effects which were especially dear to him.