In his youth Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), the great apostle of modern intellectual music, made his debut before the musical world as a brilliant and versatile pianist.  Once, when about to play in public Beethoven’s magnificent Kreutzer Sonata, with Remenyi, who was the first to recognize his genius, he discovered that the piano was half a tone below concert pitch, and rather than spoil the effect by having the violin tuned down, the boy of nineteen unhesitatingly transposed the piano part which he was playing from memory into a higher key.  The fire, energy and breadth of his rendering, together with the splendid musicianship displayed by this feat, deeply impressed the great violinist Joachim, who was present, and who became enthusiastic in his praise.  Schumann, on making his acquaintance, proclaimed the advent of a genius who wrote music in which the spirit of the age found its consummation, and who, at the piano, unveiled wonders.  By others he has been called the greatest contrapuntist after Bach, the greatest architectonist after Beethoven, the man of creative power who assimilated the older forms and invested them with a new life entirely his own.  His piano works are a rich addition to the pianist’s store, but whoever would unveil their beautiful proportions, all aglow as they are with sacred fire, must have taken a master’s degree.

Two pupils of Liszt stand out prominently—­Carl Tausig (1841-1871) and Eugene D’Albert (1864- ——­).  The first was distinguished by his extraordinary sense for style, and was thought to surpass his master in absolute flawlessness of technique.  To the second Oscar Bie attributes the crown of piano playing in our time.  Peter Iljitch Tschaikowsky (1840-1893), the distinguished representative of the modern Russian school, was an original, dramatic and fertile composer and wrote for the piano some of his highly colored and very characteristic music.  Edward Grieg (1843- ——­), the national tone-poet of Norway, has given the piano some of his most delightful efforts, fresh with the breezes of the North.

The veteran French composer, Charles Camille Saint-Saens (1835- ——­), has won great renown as a pianist, and was one of the most precocious children on record, having begun the study of the piano when under three years of age.  He was the teacher that knew how to develop the individuality of the young Russian, Leopold Godowsky, who has done such remarkable work on two continents, as a teacher and piano virtuoso.

Perhaps the most famous piano teacher of recent times is Theodore Leschetitzky, of Vienna.  His method is that of common sense, based on keen analytical faculties, and he never trains the hand apart from the musical sense.  His most renowned pupil is Ignace Jan Paderewski, the magnetic Pole, whose exquisite touch and tone long made him the idol of the concert room, and who, with time, has gained in robustness, but also in recklessness of style.  Another gifted pupil of the Viennese master is Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, of Chicago, an artiste of rare temperament, musical feeling and nervous power, of whom Dr. Hanslick said that her virtuosity was stupendous, her delicacy in the finest florid work as marvelous as her fascinating energy in the forte passages.