e fingers of the
pianist seem to multiply ad infinitum; it does not appear
possible that only two hands can produce effects of rapidity
so precise and so natural...

I shall now try to give the reader a clearer idea of what Chopin's style
of playing was like than any and all of the criticisms and descriptions
I have hitherto quoted can have done. And I do this not only in order to
satisfy a natural curiosity, but also, and more especially, to furnish a
guide for the better understanding and execution of the master's works.
Some, seeing that no music reflects more clearly its author's nature
than that of Chopin, may think that it would be wiser to illustrate
the style of playing by the style of composition, and not the style of
composition by the style of playing. Two reasons determine me to
differ from them. Our musical notation is an inadequate exponent of
the conceptions of the great masters--visible signs cannot express the
subtle shades of the emotional language; and the capabilities of
Chopin the composer and of Chopin the executant were by no means
coextensive--we cannot draw conclusions as to the character of his
playing from the character of his Polonaises in A major (Op. 40) and
in A flat (Op. 53), and certain movements of the Sonata in B flat minor
(Op. 35). The information contained in the following remarks is derived
partly from printed publications, partly from private letters and
conversations; nothing is admitted which does not proceed from Chopin's
pupils, friends, and such persons as have frequently heard him.

What struck everyone who had the good fortune to hear Chopin was the
fact that he was a pianist sui generis. Moscheles calls him an unicum;
Mendelssohn describes him as "radically original" (Gruneigentumlich);
Meyerbeer said of him that he knew no pianist, no composer for the
piano, like him; and thus I could go on quoting ad infinitum. A writer
in the "Gazette musicale" (of the year 1835, I think), who, although
he places at the head of his article side by side the names of Liszt,
Hiller, Chopin, and--Bertini, proved himself in the characterisation
of these pianists a man of some insight, remarks of Chopin: "Thought,
style, conception, even the fingering, everything, in fact, appears
individual, but of a communicative, expansive individuality, an
individuality of which superficial organisations alone fail to recognise
the magnetic influence." Chopin's place among the great pianists of the