by fellow-pupils with the purpose of showing that
Chopin did not care very much for him. For instance,
the following: Some one asked the master how his
pupil was getting on, “Oh, he makes very good
chocolate,” was the answer. Unfortunately,
I cannot speak of Gutmann’s playing from experience,
for although I spent eight days with him, it was on
a mountain-top in the Tyrol, where there were no pianos.
But Chopin’s belief in Gutmann counts with me
for something, and so does Moscheles’ reference
to him as Chopin’s “excellent pupil”;
more valuable, I think, than either is the evidence
of Dr. A. C. Mackenzie, who at my request visited
Gutmann several times in Florence and was favourably
impressed by his playing, in which he noticed especially
beauty of tone combined with power. As far as
I can make out Gutmann planned only once, in 1846,
a regular concert-tour, being furnished for it by
Chopin with letters of introduction to the highest
personages in Berlin, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg.
Through the intervention of the Countess Rossi (Henriette
Sontag), he was invited to play at a court-concert
at Charlottenburg in celebration of the King’s
birthday. [
Footnote: His part of the programme
consisted of his master’s E minor Concerto (2nd
and 3rd movements) and No. 3 of the first book of
studies, and his own tenth study.] But the day after
the concert he was seized with such home-sickness
that he returned forthwith to Paris, where he made
his appearance to the great astonishment of Chopin.
The reader may perhaps be interested in what a writer
in the Gazette Musicale said about Chopin’s favourite
pupil on March 24, 1844:—
M. Gutmann is a pianist with a neat but
somewhat cold style of playing; he has what one
calls fingers, and uses them with much dexterity.
His manner of proceeding is rather that of Thalberg
than of the clever professor who has given him lessons.
He afforded pleasure to the lovers of the piano [amateurs
de piano] at the musical soiree which he gave
last Monday at M. Erard’s. Especially
his fantasia on the “Freischutz” was
applauded.
Of course, the expression of any individual opinion
is no conclusive proof. Gutmann was so successful
as a teacher and in a way also as a composer (his
compositions, I may say in passing, were not in his
master’s but in a light salon style) that at
a comparatively early period of his life he was able
to retire from his profession. After travelling
for some time he settled at Florence, where he invented
the art, or, at least, practised the art which he
had previously invented, of painting with oil-colours
on satin. He died at Spezzia on October 27, 1882.
[Footnote: The short notice of Gutmann in
Fetis’ Biographie Universelle des Musiciens,
and those of the followers of this by no means infallible
authority, are very incorrect. Adolfo Gutmann,
Riccordi Biografici, by Giulio Piccini (Firenze:
Guiseppe Polverini, 1881), reproduces to a great extent
the information contained in Der Lieblingsschuler
Chopin’s in Bernhard Stavenow’s Schone
Geister (Bremen: Kuhlmann, 1879), both which
publications, eulogistic rather than biographical,
were inspired by Gutmann.]