During the First World War I took part in some of the most delightful chamber music making imaginable. The scene was a cellar in Chelsea, and the meetings lasted as a rule from midnight till daybreak! The audience were guests of an enthusiastic American music-lover, Muriel Draper. No public performances could ever have reached such a pitch of carefree, rapturous inspiration. There were no rehearsals; the music came fresh, and the executants were no duffers- they included Ysaÿe, Casals, Thibaud, Harold Bauer, Cortot, Kochanski (a brilliant Polish violinist), Szymanowki, Arbos, Arthur Rubinstein and Albert Sammons(…) Out of the innumerable works performed, ranging from duets to octets, one in particular stands out in my memory: Brahms’s C minor piano quartet, played by Ysaye, Casals, Rubinstein and myself. Prodigious, the lusciousness and wealth of sound! Ysaye with his great volume of tone and glorious phrasing, Casals playing in the slow movement with divinely pure expression, Rubinstein with his demoniacal command of the keyboard (his ferocity in the Scherzo was frightening) – what an experience for me to be associated with such giants. << less