Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

204-205

text excerpt

[In Vienna]  I became an assiduous frequenter of public and private musical entertainments, and was most generously admitted to the penetralia of the chief Viennese musical organisations by the great artists who directed them. One of my early experiences of " virtuosity '' on the piano, illustrating an aggravated phase of its novel departure, was gained at a matinée given in a concert-room attached to the Imperial Palace by the Chevalier Antoine de Kontski, surnamed by his admiring countrymen "The Lion of Poland"...  Blows from a playful leonine paw could scarcely, I should think, strike a larger number of notes simultaneously or with greater force of impact than did the vigorous hands of the Sarmatian Lion to whom I listened twenty years ago, for the first time, in a daze of mingled wonder and consternation. One of the pieces he played on the occasion referred to, I remember, had been intituled in such sort as to explain its special function and aim with laudable directness. It was called "Le Réveil de la Pologne," and was eminently qualified, as rendered by M. de Kontski, to awaken the dead, let alone slothful patriots of the Polish or any other persuasion. An eminent Viennese critic wrote a panic-stricken notice of the matinee alluded to, on the morrow of the performance, concluding his remarks with the following impressive words : "From battle, murder, and from sudden death, and from the Lion of Poland's pianoforte-playing, good Lord, deliver us!"

excerpt from 'Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character' pp. 204-205 (244 words)

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