THE KING OF INSTRUMENTS— WHICH?

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9387, 10 April 1896, Page 2

THE KING OF INSTRUMENTS— WHICH?

Sydney F. Hoben in the Cosmos Magazine,

It is an axiom that men and women are like sheep. A fashion is set—they follow it no matter how ill it may suit them; a custom is acquired in one country under one set of circumstances—it is followed relentlessly in another where outraged nature hourly protests against it; ; an apt phrase, an aphorism, an epigram, " catches " the popular ear—it creates a school aud a cult, becomes a part of life, and is adopted as a philosophy by people who never stop to inquire the why and the wherefore. Someone once—l do not know who— described the violin as " the king of instruments." The violin of the great Cremona school, as compared with all other instruments of the same period, was. Away back somewhere, before the evolution of the present day pianoforte and the most advanced schools of pianoforte performance, someone referred to the piano a3 "a mechanical instrument" incapable o! conveying soul or expression as was the violin. Both phraseg have I stuck, and circumstances have from time to time appeared to give them point. That, as it is to-day, the violin is unduly exalted and the piano unfairly condemned by the use of such terms, those folk who talk so glibly from the depths of uninformed minds, never pause to think. They do not remember that while there has practically been no advance in violin construction since the days of Stradivarius, Guarnerius, and Araati—in fact there has been retrogression—there has been enormous advance in regard to the pianoforte, both in the instrument itself and the mastery of it attained by modern culture. To the class of pianists which has grown up under the influence of the great Continental schools, the pianoforte is a sentient thing, a medium of expression for the composer's brain and the artist's soul, capable of conveying every phase of feeling, from the tenderest shunt of dawning maiden love to the full

round tone 3of the greatest passions that can be given musical form. It can move from tears to laughter, hold multitudes enthralled, keep strong men and emotional women in strained and breathless silence, or whirl them into storms of enthusiasm. It can, in short, express precisely what is in the performer who evokes the life that lies behind the keys, soar with his soul, vibrate with his artistic personality, and quiver with the emotion he feels. His limitations are its limitations. His possibilities are its possibilities. It is responsive to the most infinite gradations of touch from the whispering thread of melody scarcely perceptible to the ear, to the thundering crash of power, and, above all, from it can be evoked, provided the performer knows how, qualities of tone of which the ordinary pianist never dreams, and which make the same instrument played by an artist, and played by the average illinstructed performer, sound like two different instruments.

Having said so much of the reasons which have caused a wrong estimate of the pianoforte to obtain from time to time in the colonies, I will explain as fully aa can be compressed within the limits of a short contribution why the piano should be regarded as " the King of Instruments" without in any way undervaluing the violin. In the first place the most soulful, emotional and intellectual of musicians are undoubtedly the great composers. Naturally they would choose a medium of expression best calculated to exoress the musical ideas which welled up within them. In almost every instance the great composers have been pianists by choice and vocation. Mozart, Meyerbeer, Liszt, Reinecke, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Grieg, Henselt, Chopin, Hummel, Schumann, Schubert, Weber, Rubinstein, Rheinberger, Brahms, Gade, Saint Saens, Jadassohn, Padarewski, Scharwenka, Moszkowski, Sgambati, Richard Strauss, are examples. The great masters of the modern and contemporary schools are in almost 1 every instance pianists, and the list might be multiplied ad infinitum. These men found their greatest delight in improvising on the piano, pouring out their whole souls through the instrument, and entrancing those who had the privilege of listening. Many a time have I listened to Greig during his sojourn in Leipzig, improvising thus, and producing expression which almost made the piano speak, and could not be listened to unmoved, as compositions, afterwards to become world-famous, were given form, and I have since marvelled what Greig would think were he to hear these same compositions played as I have heard them played since by a certain type of musical amateur. The only safety to the little great composer would be that he probably would not recognise them as his own. It is only neoessary to run over the names of those men who have most moved their audiences to find the position the piano is entitled to as a medium of expression. Greatest of all emotional performers were Liszt and Chopin—both pianists. Both were giants in widely differing styles, the one astounding and bewildering by his marvellous technique, at one moment startling „and thrilling his auditors, and at the next melting them to tears with the expression infused into some adagio ox romance; the other never rising to great climaxes or overwhelming power, but by his exquisite touch and perfect beauty of conception ravishing all hearers. Liszt's audiences were frequently torn by sobs at the pathos of his performances. Ladies tore off their jewels and threw them to him, and men jumped to their feet and cheered themselves hearße, carried away by paroxysms of emotion. There is a suggestive comparison between two masters—the violinist and the pianist—in Amy Fay's well-known work on «• Mnsic Study in Germany." "As I recollect it," she says, writing of Liszt 3 performance at Weimar, "Liszt's playing moves mc beyond all I have ever heard. Even Joaohlm, whom I think divine, never moved mo to tears; but Liszt can make mc cry all he chooses. When he plays, the pianoforte seems to have a soul." Chopin, too, took entire possession of his audiences, playmg on their heartstrings as he played upon >he keys. Storieß of the influence of Rubinstein's playing are well-known, and we know to-day how Padarewski evokes all the emotions with his performances. It is questionable whether any violinist has ever produced the effects of expression and emotion upon Sydney audiences whioh the young Russian pianist, Mark Hambouvg, produced but the other day, and Henri Ketten in earlier times. Yet all these effects were produced with an instrument miscalled mechanical. Can the pianoforte longer be looked upon as inferior as a medium of expression to the violin? Granted that to produce these reimlts we must see many radical changes. Would-be pianists must remember that technique must be absolutely mastered before the command of expression can be achieved. Technique is the root and branch of the musical tree. Expression is the covering of leaves which giveß it beauty. The leaves cannot exist without the tree, or the tree live without the leave's. It is first necessary to so absolutely master technique as to be superior to mechanioal difficulty. This can only come of thorough training and patient intelligent practice.