Shortly after the alarming experience above recorded, I was sent on a brief mission to Berlin, where a young Austrian diplomatist, himself an amateur pianist of the very first order, and one of Carl Tausig's favourite pupils, introduced me to that truly great teacher...Tausig was good enough to play to me several times, at his own apartments and in the Bechstein repository of pianofortes, where some of the finest instruments in Europe were always at the disposal of masters of the craft But that his playing lacked inner warmth — whilst teeming with superficial fire and sparkle — I should incline to rank Tausig as one of the three greatest pianists to whose marvellous achievements I have ever listened; placing him immediately after Liszt and just a little to the front of Rubinstein.