, lyric, heroic,
dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant, grand,
simple; all possible expressions are found in his compositions
and all are sung by him upon his instrument.

Chopin is dead only fifty years, but his fame has traversed the half
century with ease, and bids fair to build securely in the loves of our
great-grandchildren. The six letters that comprise his name pursue
every piano that is made. Chopin and modern piano playing are
inseparable, and it is a strain upon homely prophecy to predict a time
when the two shall be put asunder. Chopin was the greatest interpreter
of Chopin, and following him came those giants of other days, Liszt,
Tausig, and Rubinstein.

While he never had the pupils to mould as had Liszt, Chopin made some
excellent piano artists. They all had, or have--the old guard dies
bravely--his tradition, but exactly what the Chopin tradition is no man
may dare to say. Anton Rubinstein, when I last heard him, played Chopin
inimitably. Never shall I forget the Ballades, the two Polonaises in F
sharp minor and A flat major, the B flat minor Prelude, the A minor
"Winter Wind" the two C minor studies, and the F minor Fantasie. Yet
the Chopin pupils, assembled in judgment at Paris when he gave his
Historical Recitals, refused to accept him as an interpreter. His touch
was too rich and full, his tone too big. Chopin did not care for
Liszt's reading of his music, though he trembled when he heard him
thunder in the Eroica Polonaise. I doubt if even Karl Tausig,
impeccable artist, unapproachable Chopin player, would have pleased the
composer. Chopin played as his moods prompted, and his playing was the
despair and delight of his hearers. Rubinstein did all sorts of
wonderful things with the coda of the Barcarolle--such a page!--but Sir
Charles Halle said that it was "clever but not Chopinesque." Yet Halle
heard Chopin at his last Paris concert, February, 1848, play the two
forte passages in the Barcarolle "pianissimo and with all sorts of
dynamic finesse." This is precisely what Rubinstein did, and his
pianissimo was a whisper. Von Bulow was too much of a martinet to
reveal the poetic quality, though he appreciated Chopin on the
intellectual side; his touch was not beautiful enough. The Slavic and
Magyar races are your only true Chopin interpreters. Witness Liszt the
magnificent, Rubinstein a passionate genius, Tausig who united in his
person all the elements of greatness, Essipowa f