One went io Mischa Elman's} second concert with some curiosity as to whether he would arouse in one again the extraordinary emotions which his former concert inspired, or whether they might Delong to that order of fleeting careless rapture which comes with all intense first "experiences and can never quite be recovered. Something of the latter there must be, no doubt. Yet that strange mesmeric power in the possession of which Mischa Elman seems to stand alone was as potent as ever; and if in some respects one was able to detach oneself more critically than on Tuesday, the only result was to feel the deeper admiration for the player's genius. Take, for instance, the first move of the Nardini concerto. There are some, we know, who maintain that the essential quality of such music is to be restrained, aloof, devoid of all passion: which seems to us absurd. The rigidly classical form adopted is only a _limittation of the composer's means of self-expression, not of his passion. That, it is true, may also be limited, just as a gentleman does not "let himself go" like a Billingsgate fishpotter. Now it was just in his wonderful appreciation of the feeling with which this first movement of Nardini's is filled and his ability to express it up to the very verge of over-emphasis tut never beyond, that Mischa
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.