Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

SGAMBATI 47
played Liszt to perfection), and at the same time by
taking a few lessons from him, attaining my desire of
hearing Sgambati play.
Strange fatality ! if anyone had told me that I was
going to step out of the mould into which I had been
cast—to leave quite aside all my traditional notions
as to how Bach -and Beethoven should be inter-
preted, and become a persistent imitator of the Liszt
school—I should have raised an indignant protest to
the contrary. But ' it was to be ' ; and I wrote a few
Imes to Sgambati, saying that, although I did not
expect to be more than three weeks in Eome, he
would do me a great favour by allowing me to study
one or two of Liszt's compositions with him. He
was kind enough to name an hour the next day but
one, and I betook myself to his house at the time
fixed, without any presentiment of what was to come
out of that one lesson.
Not being nervous, but merely timid, I played a
good deal by heart to him, and he at once seemed
much pleased and interested. He then sat down,
and played three or four pieces of Liszt's, winding up
the whole with a splendid reading of Bach's Fantaisie
Chromatique. In everything that he played, Sgambati
far exceeded all that I could have anticipated. His
lovely elastic touch, the weight and yet the softness
of his wrist-staccato, the swing and go of his rhythmic
beat, the colouring rich and warm, and yet most ex-
quisitely delicate, and over all the atmosphere of