Large hearted, liberal minded, whole souled in his devotion to his art and its true interests, Franz Liszt seemed wholly without personal jealousies, and befriended and brought into public notice a large number of artists.  Hector Berlioz declared that to him belonged “the sincere admiration of earnest minds, as well as the involuntary homage of the envious.”  At the opening of the Baireuth Temple of German Art, in 1876, Richard Wagner paid him this tribute in the midst of a joyful company:  “Here is one who first gave me faith in my work when no one knew anything of me.  But for him, my dear friend, Franz Liszt, you might not have had a note from me to-day.”

A rival of Liszt in the concert field, especially before a Parisian public, was Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871), who visited this country in 1855 and literally popularized the piano in America.  Alfred Jaell and Henri Herz, who had preceded him, doubtless prepared the way for his triumphs.  He and the “Creole Chopin,” Louis Moreau Gottschalk, attracted much attention by several joint appearances in our musical centres of the time.  Thalberg was a pupil of Hummel, and felt the influence of his teacher’s cold, severely classic style.  He possessed a well-trained, fascinating mechanism, with scales, chords, arpeggios and octaves that were marvels of neatness and accuracy, and a tone that was mellow and liquid, though lacking in warmth.  His operatic transcriptions, in which a central melody is enfolded in arabesques, chords and running passages, have long since become antiquated, but his art of singing on the piano and many of his original studies still remain valuable to the pianist.

When Liszt and Thalberg were in possession of the concert platform, they occupied the attention of cartoonists as fully as Paderewski at a later date.  Liszt, his hair floating wildly, was represented as darting through the air on wide-stretched pinions with keyboards attached—­a play on Fluegel, the German for grand piano.  Thalberg, owing to his dignified repose, was caricatured as posing in a stiff, rigid manner before a box of keys.

Rubinstein and Von Buelow offer two more contrasting personalities.  Anton Rubinstein (1830-1894) was the impressionist, the subjective artist, who re-created every composition he played.  The Russian tone-colorist he has been called, and the warmth and glow with which he invested every nuance can never be forgotten by those who were privileged to hear his Titanic interpretations, over whose very blemishes was cast the glamor of the impassioned temperament that caused them.  “May Heaven forgive me for every wrong note I have struck!” he exclaimed to a youthful admirer after one of his concerts in this country during the season of 1872-3.  Certainly the listener under the spell of his magnetism could forgive, almost forget.  Hans von Buelow (1830-1894) was the objective artist, whose scholarly attainments and musicianly discernment unraveled the most tangled web of phrasing and interpretation.  His Beethoven recitals, when he was in America in 1875-6, were of especial value to piano students.  As a piano virtuoso, a teacher, a conductor and an editor of musical works, he was a marked educational factor in music.