THE news that M. Godowsky is to give a Chopin recital on January 6 sends back the thoughts, especially of those who heard him on Wednesday, to this king of all writers for the piano. For although Chopin appears on every pianist's concert programme, recitals of his music alone are comparatively few and far between. At one time there was a tendency to rank Chopin's genius as belonging to the second grade—just as one used to.hear people express patronizing regret that Sullivan ''never wrote anything great.'' And in so far.as Chopin never: attempted operas of symphonies, the charge may pass. But time is the avenger. The glory of Sullivan is precisely that he did vot attempt what would have been foreign to his nature, but, perfecting his own art, produced music so truly native, so fresh, strong and flexible, that no other composer. has approached him in the style he adopted. And although, of course, there is no comparison between Chopin and Sullivan, the former also followed only the light of his own genius, with results which, the more we study, the more we must wonder at. It is an interesting speculation whether there can properly be any comparison between one manifestation of genius and another. Through the one channel it may flow in more variegated form than another, so that in a Michel Angelo it produces sculpteresting to recall that both of them drew almost wholly on the folk music of their respective countries. Even Beethoven reveals clearly what he owed to Haydn and Wagner wrote ''Rienzi' in a fit of enthusiasm for Meyerbeer. Most great composers {too have Had their imitators and founded a fashion. But the wand with which Chopin conjured no one has ever attempted to wield. He burst upon an amazed world, if so violent @ word may be used of one who was so gentle and shrinking, full fledged at the age of nineteen. For twenty years he wrote and played and so passed on, leaving a legacy of music as fresh-and unique as on the day of its birth, but in which there is nothing to irfdicate when it was written nor any stage of development in its composer. And with this peculiarity of Chopin's music, there is another, namely, that it entirely baffles description: we cannot even analyse its effect upon ourselves. Verbal descriptions of music must always be to some extent an absurdity. But whereas we can at least compare an opera or fugue or sonata with another pf its class, with some satisfaction to ourselves, Chopin eludes. us, however well we know him. We may speak of his rare colouring, strange harmonies, haunting melodies, unapproachable cadenzas, the marvellous aptitude of those internal voices which are so difficult to catch, the matchless embroidery of _his themes: but it is all words. Himself can only be revealed by himself'and assuredly the pianist who attempts to interpret Chopin must possess some spark of his own spirit. Which brings us back to the prospect of M. Godowsky's recital.
One reason why so many, we might say the great majority of players make so poor a showing with Chopin's music is that they. handle it so violently. They tear his passion' to tatters and the flights of grace notes which, as Hadow points out, are meant to covey a sense of iridescence, they treat as mere fireworks. They bang and-splash and the soul of Chopin fiees affrighted. For he was above all things quiet in his methods and delicate in his renderings.
He didn't hurl himself about on the piano stool, nor fling his arms in the air, and even his fortissimos are said to have been hardly louder than other players' mezzo-fortes.. And when-we see what this method produces under the fingers of a Pachmann or Godowsky, it becomes the more incomprehensible that others should blunder along the path with so much outrageous noisiness. Something, of course, must be conceded to the greater resonance of modern pianos and the size of hall in which recitals are given nowadays. But the great player no more abuses the power in his hands than Chopin would have done, who above all writers for the piano understood its capacities and limitations. In the G minor Ballade, for instance, and the C sharp minor Scherzo there are many passages marked" "ff." But although M. Godowsky brought these out with power, the sound produced was voluminous rather than loud, and no detail was lost amidst its many voices. For the most, part it_seemed' as if he were trying to play as softly as he could and the notes came through the laden air almost more a pulse than sound. But for these things perfect fingering and perfect touch are needed, wherein again are recalled the peculiar method and technique of Chopin. So too Godowsky, sitting so quietly at the piano, his hands never rising above a few inches from the keyboard, lapping his audience. in the spell of that unearthly music, till the Town Hall's bleak outlines fade and we seem to be back in the Parisian drawing-room of the eighteen-thirties, a - fragile boy at-the piano and Georges Sand.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.