virtuosi of my early days certainly loved playing
together, and many are the instances of such joint performances, both in
private and in public, which I recollect. How my father enjoyed playing
with Liszt he records when he says: "It was a genuine treat to draw
sparks from the piano as we dashed along together. When we are harnessed
together in a duet we make a very good pair; Apollo drives us without a
whip."

If, as my father assumes, Apollo was really the driver on occasions of
that kind, I feel sure that his favourite team must have been
Mendelssohn and Moscheles; they certainly enjoyed being in harness
together, sometimes playing, and sometimes improvising. Occasionally the
humour of the moment would lead them to compose together, as when one
evening they planned a piece for two performers to be played by them
three days later at a concert my father had announced. The Gipsies'
March from Weber's "Preziosa" being chosen as a subject for variations,
a general scheme was agreed upon, and the parts were distributed. "I
will write a variation in minor and growl in the bass," said
Mendelssohn. "Will you do a brilliant one in major in the treble?" It
was settled that the Introduction and first and second variations should
fall to Mendelssohn's lot, the third and fourth to my father's. The
finale they shared in, Mendelssohn starting with an allegro movement,
and my father following with a "piu-lento." Two days later they had a
hurried rehearsal, and on the following day they played the concertante
variations, "composed expressly for this occasion," as the programme had
it, "and performed on Erard's new patent-action grand pianoforte."
Nobody noticed that the piece had been only sketched, and that each of
the performers was allowed to improvise in his own solo, till at certain
passages agreed upon, both met again in due harmony. The _Morning Post_
of the day tells us that "the subject was treated in the most profound
and effective manner by each, and executed so brilliantly that the most
rapturous plaudits were elicited from the delighted company."

Mendelssohn himself in a letter gives a graphic account of a rehearsal
held at Clementi's pianoforte factory, when the two friends played his
"Double Concerto in E."

"It was great fun," he says; "no one can have an idea how Moscheles and
I coquetted together on the piano--how the one constantly imitated the
other, and how sweet we were. Moscheles plays the last movement wit