rt
begins where violence leaves off; that is why he can give you fortissimo
without hurting the nerves of a single string; that is why he can play a
run as if every note had its meaning. To the others a run is a flourish,
a tassel hung on for display, a thing extra; when Pachmann plays a run
you realise that it may have its own legitimate sparkle of gay life.
With him every note lives, has its own body and its own soul, and that
is why it is worth hearing him play even trivial music like
Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" or meaningless music like Taubert's Waltz:
he creates a beauty out of sound itself and a beauty which is at the
root of music. There are moments when a single chord seems to say in
itself everything that music has to say. That is the moment in which
everything but sound is annihilated, the moment of ecstasy; and it is of
such moments that Pachmann is the poet.

And so his playing of Bach, as in the Italian Concerto in F, reveals
Bach as if the dust had suddenly been brushed off his music. All that in
the playing of others had seemed hard or dry becomes suddenly luminous,
alive, and, above all, a miracle of sound. Through a delicacy of
shading, like the art of Bach himself for purity, poignancy, and
clarity, he envelops us with the thrilling atmosphere of the most
absolutely musical music in the world. The playing of this concerto is
the greatest thing I have ever heard Pachmann do, but when he went on to
play Mozart I heard another only less beautiful world of sound rise
softly about me. There was the "glittering peace" undimmed, and there
was the nervous spring, the diamond hardness, as well as the glowing
light and ardent sweetness. Yet another manner of playing, not less
appropriate to its subject, brought before me the bubbling flow, the
romantic moonlight, of Weber; this music that is a little showy, a
little luscious, but with a gracious feminine beauty of its own. Chopin
followed, and when Pachmann plays Chopin it is as if the soul of Chopin
had returned to its divine body, the notes of this sinewy and feverish
music, in which beauty becomes a torture and energy pierces to the
centre and becomes grace, and languor swoons and is reborn a winged
energy. The great third Scherzo was played with grandeur, and it is in
the Scherzos, perhaps, that Chopin has built his most enduring work. The
Barcarolle, which I have heard played as if it were Niagara and not
Venice, was given with perfect quietude, and the se