Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

SGAMBATI 63
player, and yet all the while never flagged in his
industry ; and that at twenty, when he had obtained
recognition, and was giving concerts, and was known
to be a special favourite and highly valued pupil of
Liszt, how he used to work at that time ! Yes,' she
continued, ' I have known him to begin practising
some passage which he thought wanted improvement
in a Mendelssohn concerto, and there he would sit
on, from the closing in of a winter afternoon until
near midnight, patient, absorbed, and untiring; nor
would he leave off even then, had I not begged
him to bethink himself that the other lodgers in the
Palazzo might complain if he went on any longer !
He who has done so much, and has shrmik from no
effort, no fatigue, in the maturing of his great powers,
how can he praise these young people, who, without
a tithe of his natural talent, think to accomplish
great things with comparatively little labour ?'
Sgambati has formed some very fine players
Ernesto Console; Alfredo di Lucca; Emma Metier,
a young Swiss girl, known in Germany as a concert-
player ;
and several others, whom I do not name here.
Sgambati does not usually talk much, but is dreamy
and contemplative, and often quite lost in musical
reverie ; but when he does speak, it is much to the
purpose, and, in his own beautiful language, he is
' a virtuoso,' with a perfect accent, and a command of
choice and el'egant e^fpressions. He speaks of his
art like one who has thought much and deeply on
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