I recommend his
advice. He was ever particular about fingering, but his
innovations horrified the purists. "Play as you feel," was his
motto, a rather dangerous precept for beginners. He gave to his
pupils the concertos and sonatas--all carefully graded--of
Mozart, Scarlatti, Field, Dussek, Hummel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn,
Weber and Hiller and, of Schubert, the four-hand pieces and
dances. Liszt he did not favor, which is natural, Liszt having
written nothing but brilliant paraphrases in those days. The
music of the later Liszt is quite another thing. Chopin's genius
for the pedal, his utilization of its capacity for the vibration
of related strings, the overtones, I refer to later. Rubinstein
said:
The piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind, the
piano soul is Chopin. ... Tragic, romantic, lyric, heroic,
dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant, grand,
simple; all possible expressions are found in his compositions
and all are sung by him upon his instrument.
Chopin is dead only fifty years, but his fame has traversed the
half century with ease, and bids fair to build securely in the
loves of our great-grandchildren.
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