As a pianist Moscheles was distinguished by an incisive, brilliant touch, wonderfully clear, precise phrasing, and close attention to the careful accentuation of every phase of the composer’s meaning.  Of the younger composers for the piano, Mendelssohn and Schumann were the only ones with whose works he had any sympathy, though he often complains of the latter on account of his mysticism.  His intelligence had as much if not more part in his art work than his emotions, and to this we may attribute that fine symmetry and balance in his own compositions, which make them equal in this respect to the productions of Mendelssohn.  Chopin he regarded with a sense of admiration mingled with dread, for he could by no means enter into the peculiar conditions which make the works of the Polish composer so unique.  He wrote of Chopin’s “Etudes,” in 1838:  “My thoughts and consequently my fingers ever stumble and sprawl at certain crude modulations, and I find Chopin’s productions on the whole too sugared, too little worthy of a man and an educated musician, though there is much charm and originality in the national color of his motive.”  When he heard Chopin play in after-years, however, he confessed the fascination of the performance, and bewailed his own incapacity to produce such effects in execution, though himself one of the greatest pianists in the world.  So, too, Moscheles, though dazzled by Liszt’s brilliant virtuosoism and power of transforming a single instrument into an orchestra, shook his head in doubt over such performances, and looked on them as charlatanism, which, however magnificent as an exhibition of talent, would ultimately help to degrade the piano by carrying it out of its true sphere.  Moscheles himself was a more bold and versatile player than any other performer of his school, but he aimed assiduously to confine his efforts within the perfectly legitimate and well-established channels of pianism.

As an extemporaneous player, perhaps no pianist has ever lived who could surpass Moscheles.  His improvisation on themes suggested by the audience always made one of the most attractive features of his concerts.  His profound musical knowledge, his strong sense of form, the clearness and precision with which he instinctively clothed his ideas, as well as the fertility of the ideas themselves, gave his improvised pieces something of the same air of completeness as if they were the outcome of hours of laborious solitude.  His very lack of passion and fire were favorable to this clear-cut and symmetrical expression.  His last improvisation in public, on themes furnished by the audience, formed part of the programme of a concert at London, in 1865, given by Mme. Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, in aid of the sufferers by the war between Austria and Prussia, where he extemporized for half an hour on “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” and on a theme from the andante of Beethoven’s C Minor Symphony, in a most brilliant and astonishing style.