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Huneker, James, 1860-1921

"Chopin : the Man and His Music"

Here is a brave, an undaunted Chopin,
a gay cavalier, with the sunshine shimmering about him. There are
times when this study seems like light dripping through the trees
of a mysterious forest; with the delicato there are Puck-like
rustlings, and all the while the pianist without imagination is
exercising wrist and ringers in a technical exercise! Were ever
Beauty and Duty so mated in double harness? Pegasus pulling a
cloud charged with rain over an arid country! For study, playing
the entire composition with a wrist stroke is advisable. It will
secure clear articulation, staccato and finger-memory. Von Bulow
phrases the study in groups of two, Kullak in sixes, Klindworth
and Mikuli the same, while Riemann in alternate twos, fours and
sixes. One sees his logic rather than hears it. Von Bulow
plastically reproduces the flitting, elusive character of the
study far better than the others.
It is quite like him to suggest to the panting and ambitious
pupil that the performance in F sharp major, with the same
fingering as the next study in F, No.


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