them up to the surface, so that they gleam out at you one by one, like stars! I often think
of what Tausig said once: “Oh, compared with Liszt, we other artists are all blockheads.”
29 June 1873. When Liszt plays anything pathetic, it sounds as if he had been through
everything, and opens one’s wounds afresh. All that one has ever suffered comes before
one again. Who was it that I heard say once, that years ago he saw Clara Schumann
sitting in tears near the platform, during one of Liszt’s performances? Liszt knows well
the influence he has on people, for he always fixes his eyes on some one of us when he
plays, and I believe he tries to wring our hearts. But I doubt if he feels any particular
emotion himself when he is piercing you through with his rendering. He is simply
hearing every tone, knowing exactly what effect he wishes to produce, and how to do it.
Liszt hasn’t the nervous irritability common to artists, but, on the contrary, his disposition
is the most exquisite and tranquil in the world. We have been there incessantly, and I’ve
never seen him ruffled except two or three times, and then he was tired and not himself,
and it was a most transient thing.
24 July 1873. Liszt is going away to-day. He was to have left several days ago, but the
Emperor of Austria or Russia (I don’t know which) came to visit the Grand Duke, and of
course Liszt was obliged to be on hand and to spend a day with them. He is such a
grandee himself that kings and emperors are quite matters of course to him. Never was a
man so courted and spoiled as he! The Grand Duchess herself frequently visits him. But
he never allows anyone to ask him to play and even she doesn’t venture it. That is the
only point in which one sees Liszt’s sense of his own greatness; otherwise his manner is
remarkably unassuming.’
Fay &Tausig
Amy Fay began to take lessons at Tausig’s Conservatory in Berlin in 1873.
‘You have no idea how hard they make Cramer’s Studies here. Ehlert makes me play
them tremendously forte, and as fast as I can go. My hand gets so tired that it is ready to
break and then I say that I cannot go on. ‘But you must go on,’ he will say.
Tausig was standing by the piano. “Begin!” said he, to Timanoff, more shortly even than
usual; “I trust you brought me a study this time”. He always insised upon a study in
addition to the piece. Timanoff replied in the affirmative and proceeded to open
Chopin’s Etudes. She played the great A Minor “Winter Wind” study, and most
magnificently, too, starting off with the greatest brilliancy and “go”. I was perfectly
amazed at such a feat from such a child, and expected that Tausig would exclaim with
admitration. Not so that Rhadamanthus. He heard it through without comment or
correction, and when Timanoff had finished, simply remarked very composedly, “So!
Have you taken the next étude also?” as if the great A minor were not enough for one
meal! Afterward, however, he told the young men that he “could not have done it better”
himself.