I believe that if an
audience of the best musicians could be assembled in a small room and
this work could be played to them, they could not fail to be impressed
with its beauties. I am now studying a new concerto by Haddon Wood,
which you see in manuscript there on the piano; it is one I find very
beautiful."

A subsequent conversation with the artist elicited the following:

"I might say that I began my music when about four years old, by playing
the Russian National Hymn, on a toy piano containing eight keys, which
had been given me. My older sister, who was studying the piano, noticed
this, showed me a few things about the notes, and I constantly picked
out little tunes and pieces on the real piano. Finally one day my
sister's teacher, Rudolph Heim, came to the house, mainly on my account.
This was in Odessa, in the south of Russia, where I was born and where I
spent my early years. On this occasion, he wanted to look at me and see
what I could do. Unluckily a sudden fit of shyness overcame me and I
began to cry; the exhibition could not take place, as nothing could be
made out of me that day. You see I was headstrong even at that early
age," said the young pianist, with one of her charming smiles.

"Soon after this incident, I was taken to the Professor's studio. He
examined me, considered I had talent, and thought it should be
cultivated. So he took me in hand. I was then five, and my real musical
education began at that time.

"From the very first I adopted a position of hand which seemed to me
most convenient and comfortable, and no amount of contrary instruction
and advice has ever been able to make me change it. I play scales and
passages with low hand and flat fingers because that position seems the
most favorable for my hand. When practising, I play everything very
slowly, raising my fingers high and straight from the knuckle joint.
This gives me great clearness and firmness. In rapid passage work the
action is reduced, but the position remains. I am said to have a clear,
pearly touch, with quite sufficient power at my command for large works.

"After five years of study with my first teacher, Rudolph Heim, a pupil
of Moscheles, I entered the Moscow Conservatory, and continued my
studies under Professor Pabst, brother and teacher of the composer of
that name. I was then ten years old. Professor Pabst was very
conservative, very strict, and kept me at work on the music of the older
masters. This kind of