Beautifully [says Lenz], but not so beautifully as his own things, not enthrallingly [packend], not en relief, not as a romance increasing in interest from variation to variation.  He whispered it mezza voce, but it was incomparable in the cantilena, infinitely perfect in the phrasing of the structure, ideally beautiful, but feminine!  Beethoven is a man and never ceases to be one!

Chopin played on a Pleyel, he made it a point never to give lessons on another instrument; they were obliged to get a Pleyel.  All were charmed, I also was charmed, but only with the tone of Chopin, with his touch, with his sweetness and grace, with the purity of his style.

Chopin’s purity of style, self-command, and aristocratic reserve have to be quite especially noted by us who are accustomed to hear the master’s compositions played wildly, deliriously, ostentatiously.  J. B. Cramer’s remarks on Chopin are significant.  The master of a bygone age said of the master of the then flourishing generation:—­

  I do not understand him, but he plays beautifully and
  correctly, oh! very correctly, he does not give way to his
  passion like other young men, but I do not understand him.

What one reads and hears of Chopin’s playing agrees with the account of his pupil Mikuli, who remarks that, with all the warmth which Chopin possessed in so high a degree, his rendering was nevertheless temperate [massvoll], chaste, nay, aristocratic, and sometimes even severely reserved.  When, on returning home from the above-mentioned visit to the Russian ladies, Lenz expressed his sincere opinion of Chopin’s playing of Beethoven’s variations, the master replied testily:  “I indicate (j’indique); the hearer must complete (parachever) the picture.”  And when afterwards, while Chopin was changing his clothes in an adjoining room, Lenz committed the impertinence of playing Beethoven’s theme as he understood it, the master came in in his shirt-sleeves, sat down beside him, and at the end of the theme laid his hand on Lenz’s shoulder and said:  “I shall tell Liszt of it; this has never happened to me before; but it is beautiful—­well, but must one then always speak so passionately (si declamatoirement)?” The italics in the text, not those in parentheses, are mine.  I marked some of Chopin’s words thus that they might get the attention they deserve.  “Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are.”  Parodying this aphorism one might say, not without a good deal of truth:  Tell me what piano you use, and I will tell you what sort of a pianist you are.  Liszt gives us all the desirable information as to Chopin’s predilection in this respect.  But Lenz too has, as we have seen, touched on this point.  Liszt writes:—­