MAN OF MAGIC HANDS

Evening Star, Issue 21318, 24 January 1933, Page 12

MAN OF MAGIC HANDS

AH AFTERNOON WITH PACMNN MOST AMAZING OF PIANISTS Five years ago the ‘ Weekly Despatch ’ published this sketch of Vladimir de Pachmann, the famous pianist whose death is now reported. December, 1927. A little old man bent over a fragment of Chopin opera and kissed it passionately. “ Unique, marvellous,” ho murmured, “ most difficult of all : but not to AIE. ...” The little old man straightened his back, squared his shoulders, cried: “ Look, see ’ecm walk. How he is young! ” —and disappeared with brisk steps round a corner of his flat high above the roar of London traffic. The little old man sat at a piano, a solitary tooth breaking the gape of his elfin smile, and grinned (as only he can) Tip at me. “Watch do" left ! and,” he hissed. '“ What you t’ink, holi? Coloss-arl. Bravo, Pachmann! The little old man was Pachmann—challenging, bewildering, most amazing of pianists. Two years ago.he retired, bub now, under medical advice, ho has resumed his concerts. HOURS TO REMEMBER. Through a whole afternoon I sat with him. He said that as for him, Pachmann, ho should never forget it; tears came into his eyes; ho pulled my head down and saluted mo on both cheeks. As for me, I declared, with truth, that the memory of those hours would never fade. Who could possibly forget an afternoon alone with Pachmann ? A day’s stubble glistened on his jaw; he wore a curious white neckerchief and a lounge suit; to begin with be bad powerful, horn-rimmed glasses and a ring on his linger, but later lie discarded both glasses and ring—that was when ho rose from the luncheon table and went to his beloved piano. . “ Seventy-nine and free month,” he said, “ but see my ’air. Not white yet. No, sir. Cafe an lait—more cafe than lait, hch. Ho, ho, ho! Believe me, .yes.” Ho poured a liqueur through a strainer into his glass; coffee, too, was served to him in that way. “ Always .1 have them thus,” ho commented. “ And I take cigar from only one man, my manager.” He leaned across, grinned at me impishly, and whispered; “It might be poisoned.” DEFYING AGE. I examined In's hands as he spread them on the tablecloth. Extraordinary hands, those. Not the long fingers of the conventional conception of a pianist; much shorter than those of his teacher, Abbe Liszt. The nails trimmed close; the flesh remarkably young; so light in his touch that it is like a butterfly alighting on your wrist. And, suddenly, when I questioned him about his hands, he separated the middle finger of the right hand and held it up for inspection. His mind flew back over seventy-five years. He was a boy of four and the visitor to his home wanted a light for his cigarette. “It was a long match,” he recalled, “ ami it burned my finger.” (He shook his hand at the memory of it.) “ My mother put something on for me, but the nail was injured. See! ” And surely, in his otherwise perfect hands, there is a slight deformity of that particular nail. “ Strange,” he said, “ that I remember that so clearly and other things nearer I cannot.” But he rejects with the utmost vigour any suggestion that ho is growing old. Jn proof he started up from the table, drew attention to the straightness of the back, and went for a rapid walk in his flat. If you could have seen the roguish way he flung up his shoulder and laughed at mo over it—defying age. “ Now I play to yon,” ho said. “ But first 1 wash my ’ands. I must not touch my piano else. My piano expression. “ Makers come to see it. I tell them: ‘lf you can equal it I give it to yon.’ Hut I never shall. They cannot equal it.” The instrument occupies the side of a small salon, in which a coal fire was burning, and tho windows were close shut. For Pachmann finds the English atmosphere trying after tho sunshine of Ids Italian home, and, although lie is up at 8 o’clock and practises daily for four and five hours, and is abed by 11 o’clock, he seldom goes out. LISZT MADE JEALOUS. I doubt very much whether he has observed that London streets have changed since he first came hero fortyfive years ago. He lives largely in liimself, is impatient with unpunctuality, and cannot understand that traffic congestion may have delayed tho caller. He sits at the piano, which has dumpy logs, on his worn little stool.