Music-Study in Germany, from the Home Correspondence of Amy Fay. Fay Amy

      Tausig's octave playing is the most extraordinary I ever heard. The last great effect on his programme was in the Rhapsody by Liszt, in an octave variation. He first played it so pianissimo that you could only just hear it, and then he repeated the variation and gave it tremendously forte. It was colossal! His scales surpass Clara Schumann's, and it seems as if he played with velvet fingers, his touch is so very soft. He played the great C major Sonata by Beethoven – Moscheles' favorite, you know. His conception of it was not brilliant, as I expected it would be, but very calm and dreamy, and the first movement especially he took very piano. He did it most beautifully, but I was not quite satisfied with the last movement, for I expected he would make a grand climax with those passionate trills, and he did not. Chopin he plays divinely, and that little Bourrée of Bach's that I used to play, was magical. He played it like lightning, and made it perfectly bewitching.

      Altogether, he is a great man. But Clara Schumann always puts herself en rapport with you immediately. Tausig and Rubinstein do not sway you as she does, and, therefore, I think she is the greater interpreter, although I imagine the Germans would not agree with me. Tausig has such a little hand that I wonder he has been able to acquire his immense virtuosity. He is only thirty years old, and is much younger than Rubinstein or Bülow.

      The day after Tausig's concert I went, as usual, to hear him give the lesson to his best class of girls. I got there a little before the hour, and the girls were in the dressing-room waiting for the young men to be through with their lesson. They were talking about the concert. "Was it not beautiful?" said little Timanoff, to me; "I did not sleep the whole night after it!" – a touch of sentiment that quite surprised me in that small personage, and made me feel some compunctions, as I had slept soundly myself. "I have practiced five hours to-day already," she added. Just then the young men came out of the class-room and we passed into it. Tausig was standing by the piano. "Begin!" said he, to Timanoff, more shortly even than usual; "I trust you have brought me a study this time." He always insists 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 admiration. 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 Etude, also?" as if the great A minor were not enough for one meal! It is eight pages long to begin with, and there is no let-up to the difficulty all the way through. Afterward, however, he told the young men that he "could not have done it better" himself.

      Tausig is so hasty and impatient that to be in his classes must be a fearful ordeal. He will not bear the slightest fault. The last time I went into his class to hear him teach he was dreadful. Fräulein H. began, and she has remarkable talent, and is far beyond me. She would not play piano enough to suit him, and finally he stamped his foot at her, snatched her hand from the piano, and said: "Will you play piano or not, for if not we will go no farther?" The second girl sat down and played a few lines. He made her begin over again several times, and finally came up and took her music away and slapped it down on the piano, – "You have been studying this for weeks and you can't play a note of it; practice it for a month and then you can bring it to me again," he said.

      The third was Fräulein Timanoff, who is a little genius, I think. She brought a Sonata by Schubert – the lovely one in A minor – and by the way he behaved Tausig must have a particular feeling about that particular Sonata. Timanoff began running it off in her usual nimble style, having practiced it evidently every minute of the time when she was not asleep, since the last lesson. She had not proceeded far down the first page when he stopped her, and began to fuss over the expression. She began again, but this time with no better luck. A third time, but still he was dissatisfied, though he suffered her to go on a little farther. He kept stopping her every moment in the most tantalizing and exasperating manner. If it had been I, I should have cried, but Timanoff is well broken, and only flushed deeply to the very tips of her small ears. From an apple blossom she changed to a carnation. Tausig grew more and more savage, and made her skip whole pages in his impatience. "Play here!" he would say, in the most imperative tone, pointing to a half or whole page farther on. "This I cannot hear! – Go on farther! – It is too bad to be listened to!" Finally, he struck the music with the back of his hand, and exclaimed, in a despairing way, "Kind, es liegt eine Seele darin. Weiss du nicht es liegt eine SEELE darin? (Child, there's a soul in the piece. Don't you know there is a soul in it?)" To the little Timanoff, who has no soul, and who is not sufficiently experienced to counterfeit one, this speech evidently conveyed no particular idea. She ran on as glibly as ever till Tausig could endure no more, and shut up the music. I was much disappointed, as it was new to me, and I like to hear Timanoff's little fingers tinkle over the keys, "Seele" or no "Seele." She has a most accurate and dainty way of doing everything, and somehow, in her healthy little brain I hardly wish for Seele!

      Last of all Fräulein L. played, and she alone suited Tausig. She is a Swede, and is the best scholar he has, but she has such frightfully ugly hands, and holds them so terribly, that when I look at her I cannot enjoy her playing. Tausig always praises her very much, and she is tremendously ambitious.

      Tausig has a charming face, full of expression and very sensitive. He is extremely sharp-sighted, and has eyes in the back of his head, I believe. He is far too small and too despotic to be fascinating, however, though he has a sort of captivating way with him when he is in a good humor.

      I was dreadfully sorry to hear of poor Gottschalk's death. He had a golden touch, and equal to any in the world, I think. But what a romantic way to die! – to fall senseless at his instrument, while he was playing "La Morte." It was very strange. If anything more is in the papers about him you must send it to me, for the infatuation that I and 99,999 other American girls once felt for him, still lingers in my breast!

      On Saturday night I went for the first time to hear the Berlin Symphony Kapelle. It is composed only of artists, and is the most splendid music imaginable. De Ahna, for instance, is one of the violinists, and he is not far behind Joachim. We have no conception of such an orchestra in America.1 The Philharmonic of New York approaches it, but is still a long way off. This orchestra is so perfect, and plays with such precision, that you can't realize that there are any performers at all. It is just a great wave of sound that rolls over you as smooth as glass. As the concert halls are much smaller here, the music is much louder, and every man not only plays piano and forte where it is marked, but he draws the tone out of his violin. They have the greatest pathos, consequently, in the soft parts, and overwhelming power in the loud. Where great expression is required the conductor almost ceases to beat time, and it seems as if the performers took it ad libitum; but they understand