Through the musicale, Ysaÿe continued gulping wine. This did not add any polish to his playing. His hands trembled anyway, and after the wine. . . During those years Ysaÿe appeared as a violinist less and less frequently, and when he did go onstage, more often than not he was no longer the legendary master and inspired musician who had played Bach, Beethoven and the Romantics with his famed brilliance and transcendence. But violinists went to Ysaÿe’s concerts anyway. When he appeared in Paris, you could see all the elite there: Kreisler, Enesco, Thibaud. They conceded freely that Ysaÿe’s performance style had influenced them – had encouraged them to a more relaxed interpretation, with improvisational vibrato and freely used rubato. Those marvellous violinists were all, so to speak, Ysaÿe’s spiritual students. I don’t know what they would have gained from le maître if they had taken regular lessons from him. I, alas, learned almost nothing. At first I was bursting with enthusiasm. I moved to a small pension not far from Le Zoute and for six or seven weeks came to le maître assiduously for instruction. But Ysaÿe said practically nothing to me! I brought him the Brahms’s concerto. Ysaÿe was not interested in the least in my playing. Instead of hearing me out, he picked up his violin and began playing the concerto along with me, doing the orchestra part. He sawed away enthusiastically, trying to imitate the flute or clarinet, while I was developing a terrible headache! << less