oncert, was even more enthusiastic for Busoni than for Ysaye. I hear
both spoken of as artists, as great artists; and yet, if words have any
meaning, it seems to me that only one of the two is an artist at all,
and the other, with all his ability, only an executant. Admit, for a
moment, that the technique of the two is equal, though it is not quite
possible to admit even that, in the strictest sense. So far, we have
made only a beginning. Without technique, perfect of its kind, no one is
worth consideration in any art. The rope-dancer or the acrobat must be
perfect in technique before he appears on the stage at all; in his case,
a lapse from perfection brings its own penalty, death perhaps; his art
begins when his technique is already perfect. Artists who deal in
materials less fragile than human life should have no less undeviating a
sense of responsibility to themselves and to art. But the performance
comes afterwards, and it is the performance with which we are concerned.
Of two acrobats, each equally skilful, one will be individual and an
artist, the other will remain consummately skilful and uninteresting;
the one having begun where the other leaves off. Now Busoni can do, on
the pianoforte, whatever he can conceive; the question is, what can he
conceive? As he sat at the piano playing Chopin, I thought of Busoni, of
the Bechstein piano, of what fingers can do, of many other extraneous
things, never of Chopin. I saw the pianist with the Christ-like head,
the carefully negligent elegance of his appearance, and I heard
wonderful sounds coming out of the Bechstein piano; but, try as hard as
I liked, I could not feel the contact of soul and instrument, I could
not feel that a human being was expressing himself in sound. A task was
magnificently accomplished, but a new beauty had not come into the
world. Then the Kreutzer Sonata began, and I looked at Ysaye, as he
stood, an almost shapeless mass of flesh, holding the violin between his
fat fingers, and looking vaguely into the air. He put the violin to his
shoulder. The face had been like a mass of clay, waiting the sculptor's
thumb. As the music came, an invisible touch seemed to pass over it; the
heavy mouth and chin remained firm, pressed down on the violin; but the
eyelids and the eyebrows began to move, as if the eyes saw the sound,
and were drawing it in luxuriously, with a kind of sleepy ecstasy, as
one draws in perfume out of a flower. Then, in that instant, a beau