Musings & memories of a musician

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

30-31

text excerpt

It was in the summer of that same year that, at a meeting of the " Allgemeine Tonkünstler- Verein " (General Tone- Artists' Union), held at Altenburg in Saxony, I first met that wonderfully fascinating man Franz Liszt, in some of whose works, produced on that occasion, I had to sing the bass soli. Liszt was beyond expectation kind to me, and only too readily I accepted his most cordial invitation to visit him at his home in Weimar after the meeting... on one of those occasions, for instance, it was my good luck not only to see but also to hear in that historical music-room, besides the illustrious host himself, no fewer and no lesser stars than Anton Rubinstein, Carl Tausig, and Hans von Bülow. 

Here there were the four greatest pianists of the time together, not in a vast concert hall, but in a small private room, in their shirt-sleeves, so to say, enabling us privileged fellow- guests to compare, not from memory or distance, but by immediate impression, within the compass of an hour or so, the stupendous power of a Rubinstein with the polished infallibility of a Tausig, the irreproachable classicism of a Bülow with the enchanting grace and romanticism of a Liszt. They are gone, all those four great ones, but the memory of that Sunday morning is more real, more living to me to - day than any reproduction of their playing could be by the wonderfully ingenious musical inventions of this electric age.

excerpt from 'Musings & memories of a musician' pp. 30-31 (251 words)

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1452636825724