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His name is V., and he is dreadfully nervous. Liszt kept up a running fire of satire all the time he was playing, but in a good-natured way. I shouldn't have minded it if it had been I. In fact, I think it would have inspired me; but poor V. hardly knew whether he was on his head or on his feet. It was too funny. Everything that Liszt says is so striking. For instance, in one place where V. was playing the melody rather feebly, Liszt suddenly took his seat at the piano and said, "When I play, I always play for the people in the gallery, so that those people who pay only five groschens for their seats also hear something." Then he began, and I wish you could have heard him! The sound didn't seem to be very loud, but it was penetrating and far-reaching. When he had finished, he raised one hand in the air, and you seemed to see all the people in the gallery drinking in the sound. That is the way Liszt teaches you. He presents an idea to you, and it takes fast hold of your mind and sticks there. Music is such a real, visible thing to him that he always has a symbol, instantly, in the material world to express his idea. One day, when I was playing, I made too much movement with my hand in a rotary sort of a passage where it was difficult to avoid it. "Keep your hand still, Fraulein," said Liszt; "don't make omelet." I couldn't help laughing--it hit me on the head so nicely. He is far too sparing of his playing, unfortunately, and like Tausig, sits down and plays only a few bars at a time generally. It is dreadful when he stops, just as you are at the height of your enjoyment, but he is so thoroughly blase that he doesn't care to show off before people and doesn't like to have any one pay him a compliment about his playing. In Liszt I can at least say that my ideal in something has been realized. He goes far beyond all that I expected. Anything so perfectly beautiful as he looks when he sits at the piano I never saw, and yet he is almost an old man now. I enjoy him as I would an exquisite work of art. His personal magnetism is immense, and I can scarcely bear it when he plays. He can make me cry all he chooses, and that is saying a good deal, because I've heard so much music, and never have been affected by it. Even Joachim, whom I think divine, never move
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