Untitled

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

He begins to play, and with the swift, incredible daintiness of his wonderful fingers romance and laughter and tragedy come into the room. Alistily you visualise tho great ■ masters of whom he speaks—Chopin, Wagner, Liszt—they seem to take shape in the shadows of the darkening room. Ho is playing a Chopin ballade—a thing of exquisite beauty. He suddenly throws up his right hand. “ Wagner,” he explains, “ he kiss that ’and. Yes. sir.” The little Americanism continually creeps into his conversation. “ Liszt take me to ’im. 1 play the ballade. “ Wagner, ho sit over there and ho come to mo and take my ’and. J think to lead me to tho luncheon. But no, he raise it to his lips. And Liszt. Tho colour go from his face. He is what you call rather jealous. Ha, ha! Ho, ho, ho! “BRAVO, PACHMANN!” “ Listen. Others, by now they would be fatigue. But not Pachmann. Watch. See the wrist.” He touches it to indicate how straight it is. “ I sit upright. 1 am never fatigue. But after lunch the digestion. L not play quite so well. No. Sec the fingers. Now. Ah, difficult, very, very difficult. But to me, up. Not to Pachmann. They 7 score it for tho right ’and; but sec my loft. Ha, ha! Wonderful. Coloss-arl. Pachmann, bravo Pacbmann. Scherzo —a joke.” He pronounced it “jock.” “Ho, ho! It is a joke. “ What fingering 1 If Chopin hear me now ho fall down at my feet. Wonderful. . . , • What you t’ink, heh?” “ Marvellous,” 1 suggested. " Ah, no, no,” he objected; “ moro -coloss-arl. There is no pianist like mo. If .you ’ear another artist you walk out. You say ‘ No, not after I’adimann.’ People in the gallery, they cannot see my ’ands. They think it cannot be done. They will not believe. After I finish, a contessa she come and kiss my ’and. They all do. The chefs they pick mo out the tenderest pieces of moat . . . they would cut their, own flesh for me, the great artist. Lum-tum-tum-tee-tce-teo. . . Listen. See, they say right 'and. For me the left.” And the notes stream out in rippling cascades. “ Pardon,” he says, “ what is it—ah, yes. There. It is the simple passages I forget some time—not the difficult.” SECRETS OF HIS TECHNIQUE. All the while, as he plays, he maintains a fragmentary monologue. He breaks off to touch his heart—“ from the soul comes my music ” —he blows adulatory kisses to an imaginary Pachmann, ii stupendous figure who bestrides the musical world like a Colossus; he brushes aside contemptuously other pianists. There have only been two pianists—Liszt and Pachmann, and Liszt is dead! And here is Pachmann in a London flat, playing to me who have never struck a true chord from a piano, explaining to me his “ met’od,” revealing the secrets of his marvellous technique, going over a passage ever so slowly that 1 may follow the subtle movements of his fingers, how sometimes he places them between the black notes with pedal on to obtain a specially delicate effect, how other pianists exhaust themselves by elaborate genuflexions of their hands, and droop over the keys, while he, Pachmann, is upright and his forearms and wrists are in a direct line. . , . “ What you t’ink, heh? Coloss-arl! Ha—ha, ho—ho—ho!” ■ Now he looks like a gnome, full of puchish mischief ; now he glares at me like a transpontine villain; now he is the artist silent and absorbed, caressing the keys, his greying hair tossed back and his lips moving silently to tho melody. “ I play for myself alone now; I talk to you no longer. . . . See, from the soul. AIE!” UNDER THE SPELL. I had understood that I was to remain with Paclmiann for half an hour at most, but actually dusk was falling as I came out into the London street and awoke to realities. If I read a fairy tale again I shall have a new perception of the emotions of hero or heroine as they come under tho magician’s spell. For three hours I was under the spell of a twentieth century magician —a magician who, even when ho drew himself to the full of his stature, was only sft .. . and with heels together and hand on breast bowing again to me with infinite grace and murmuring: “An revoir, 1 shall not forget.” “ What yon t’ink, hch? “ Coloss-arl!” MUSIC-AND HUAIOUR. Tbc ‘ Daily Chronicle ’ reported this defence by De Paclmiann of the antics with which he would vary his recitals; “ Alost people think that music and humour can not walk had in hand. Why not? Wagner and many other great giants delighted in a little musical horseplay. So sometimes when I play I am merry. I hold my right hand high on a rest, and when it seems too late strike the note just in time. Then I turn round and smile at the shade of Liszt, saying: ‘ You dared not do that!’ I do not' boast when I say that to-day I am the only pianist with a great platform personality. Aly so-called eccentricities, my litlc jokes, my whirling of the piano stool, mv smiles and my grimaces, they are all the expression of my personality. Paderewski is grand and majestic—but the others are all wooden. They are afraid to be human with music. It is the human touch that binds me to my music and my audiences. 1 love them, and I want them ta hue mo.”