Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

SGAMBAT2 6i
Sgambati's playing of Beethoven's E Flat Concerto
was (I should rather say is) one of the finest I have
ever heard; such beautiful tone, such perfect taste,
such broad simple phrasing, such reserve of force
never have I heard any artist sink so poetically from
forte to piano in the two octave passages of the first
movement. I had, moreover, the advantage Of hear-
ing him play it several times, both in the Sala Dante
with the orchestra, and in his own house with the
accompaniment of a second pianoforte. Like all
great artists, Sgambati really shines most when en
rohe (Ic chamhre, and seeming scarcely to be trying to
play at all. I have heard him, for instance, accom-
pany some very promising young pianist in such
pieces as the Mendelssohn Concertos, the Concert
Htilck, and others, when the pupil has had the good
instrument and Sgambati a very inferior one; and
yet, with Sgambati evidently out of practice, and
taking no trouble, as he sat there with a cigar
between his lips, looking all nonchalance and easy
insouciance, one felt what he was, just as one feels
that the sun is there behind the clouds. The pupil
was brilhant, and was playing without apparent
difiiculty, and yet all the while one had a conscious-
ness that under this apparent ease there was effort
and strain, the anxious throb of endeavour not yet
quite sure of itself. I have heard those who were not
his friends call Sgambati ' a cold player '; but this is
not true. The utmost I would say is that he is at
;