drinks with the idea that they lead to a more
fiery performance is a dangerous custom that has been the ruin of more
than one pianist. The performer who would be at his best must live a
very careful, almost abstemious life. Any unnatural excess is sure to
mar his playing and lead to his downfall with the public. I have seen
this done over and over again, and have watched alcohol tear down in a
few years what had taken decades of hard practice and earnest study to
build up.

JUDICIOUS USE OF TECHNICAL EXERCISES

The field of music is so enormous that I have often thought that the
teacher should be very careful not to overdo the matter of giving
technical exercises. Technical exercises are, at best, short cuts. They
are necessary for the student. He should have a variety of them, and not
be kept incessantly pounding away at one or two exercises. As Nicholas
Rubinstein once said to me, "Scales should never be dry. If you are not
interested in them work with them until you become interested in them."
They should be played with accents and in different rhythms. If they are
given in the shapeless manner in which some teachers obliged their
unfortunate pupils to practice them they are worthless. I do not
believe in working out technical exercises at a table or with a dumb
piano. The brain must always work with the fingers, and without the
sound of the piano the imagination must be enormously stretched to get
anything more than the most senseless, toneless, soulless touch.

Technic with many is unmistakably a gift. I say this after having given
the matter much careful thought. It is like the gift of speech. Some
people are fluent talkers, precisely as some people can do more in two
hours' technical work at the keyboard than others could accomplish with
four. Of course, much can be accomplished with persistent practice, and
a latent gift may be awakened, but it is certainly not given to all to
become able technicalists. Again some become very proficient from the
technical standpoint, but are barren, soulless, uninspired and vapid
when it comes to the artistic and musicianly interpretation of a piece.

There comes a time to every advanced pianist when such exercises as the
scales, arpeggios, the studies of Czerny and Cramer are unnecessary. I
have not practiced them for some years, but pray do not think that I
attempt to go without exercises. These exercises I make by selecting
difficult parts of famous pieces and practicin