MODERN PIANO MUSIC

“Your MacDowell has written some nice music, some pretty music; I am familiar with his Concerto in D minor, some of the short pieces and the Sonatas.  As for modern piano concertos there are not many, it is quite true.  There is the Rachmaninoff, the MacDowell I mentioned, the D minor of Rubinstein, and the Saint-Saens in G minor.  There is also a Concerto by Neitzel, which is a most interesting work; I do not recall that it has been played in America.  I have played it on the other side, and I may bring it out here during my present tour.  This Concerto is a fine work, into which the author has put his best thought, feeling and power.”

A BRAHMS CONCERTO

As I listened to the eloquent reading of the Brahms second Concerto, which Mr. Bachaus gave soon afterward with the New York Symphony, I was reminded of a memorable event which occurred during my student days in Berlin.  It was a special concert, at which the honored guest and soloist was the great Brahms himself.  Von Buelow conducted the orchestra, and Brahms played his second Concerto.  The Hamburg master was not a virtuoso, in the present acceptance of the term:  his touch on the piano was somewhat hard and dry; but he played the work with commendable dexterity, and made an imposing figure as he sat at the piano, with his grand head and his long beard.  Of course his performance aroused immense enthusiasm; there was no end of applause and cheering, and then came a huge laurel wreath.  I mentioned this episode to Mr. Bachaus a few days later.

“I first played the Brahms Concerto in Vienna under Hans Richter; he had counseled me to study the work.  The Americans are beginning to admire and appreciate Brahms; he ought to have a great vogue here.

“In studying such a work, for piano and orchestra, I must not only know my own part but all the other parts—­what each instrument is doing.  I always study a concerto with the orchestral score, so that I can see it all before me.”

XXIII

ALEXANDER LAMBERT

AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN TEACHERS

Among American teachers Alexander Lambert takes high rank.  For over twenty-five years he has held aloft the standard of sound musicianship in the art of teaching and playing.  A quarter of a century of thorough, conscientious effort along these lines must have left its impress upon the whole rising generation of students and teachers in this country, and made for the progress and advancement of American art.