Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

62 MV MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
times reserved, and cannot ' let go '—cannot always
solve the problem which makes the playing of the
greatest artists a tantalizing forst, the problem how
to be at once self-contained and impassioned, at once
firmly balanced and yet floating midway between
earth and heaven. No artist, however great, ever
invariably solves that problem ; but either,, like
Eubinstein, lets impulsiveness lead him with head-
long impetuosity into a wild storm of incoherent
passion; or, if th% artist's will holds the emotional
element so much in check that the intellectual ele-
ment predominates, then the artist stands before us
dwarfed, a pianist indeed, and it may be one of no
common order, but without the magic power, the
soul-subduing thrill, for lack of which art is not
living and vital, but a petrifaction, a crystal.
How Sgambati must have worked before he attained
-this mastery, the following anecdote will very clearly
instance. The lady who told it to me was a near
relation of Sgambati. I had been telling her that
several of his pupils in the academy had complained
to me that, after having done their best, the only
praise he ever gave them—and that very rarely—was
' 'Non c'e male '
(' It is not amiss ')• 'If he would but
praise us a little more,' they said, ' we should get on
ever so much better.'
' But, my dear signorina,' said the lady, ' only think
what Sgambati's natural endowments are : when I
tell you that at fifteen he was already a charming