re persistence, for he
might have yielded in the end, and I would have got a more _intime_
idea of his playing; for after all a musical tete-a-tete like that is
preferable to any public hearing. I never heard Grieg play at a
concert, but I am sure that the hour I sat near him in his Bergen
home, while he played and his wife sang, gave me a better appreciation
of his skill as an interpreter than I could have got in a public hall
with an audience to distract his attention. One afternoon I called on
Saint-Saens at his hotel after one of his concerts in New York.
Talking about it, he sat down at the piano, ran over his _Valse
Canariote_, and said: 'That's the way I _ought_ to have played it!'

"MacDowell was quite right in saying that he was out of practice; he
generally was, his duties as professor allowing him little time for
technical exercising; but once every few years he set to work and got
his fingers into a condition which enabled them to follow his
intentions; and those intentions, it is needless to say, were always
honourable! He never played any of those show pieces which help along
a pianist, but confined himself to the best he could find.

"Usually the first half of a recital was devoted to the classical and
romantic masters, the second to his own compositions. Beethoven,
Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, were likely to be represented, and he
also did missionary work for Templeton Strong and other Americans. His
interpretation of the music of other composers was both objective and
subjective; there was no distortion or exaggeration, yet one could not
mistake the fact that it was MacDowell who was playing it.

"The expression, 'he played like a composer,' is often used to hint
that the technic was not that of a virtuoso. In this sense MacDowell
did not play like a composer; his technical skill was equal to
everything he played, though never obtrusive. In another sense he did
play 'like a composer,' especially when interpreting his own pieces;
that is, he played with an insight, a subtlety of expression, which
only a creative performer has at his command. I doubt if Chopin
himself could have rendered one of his pieces with more ravishing
delicacy than MacDowell showed in playing his 'To a Wild Rose.' I
doubt if Liszt could have shown a more overwhelming dramatic power
than MacDowell did in playing his 'Keltic' sonata. In this combination
of feminine tenderness with masculine strength he was, as in his
creative g