ve Mozart to my
pupils. Those endless scales, arpeggios and passages, which must be
flawless, in which you dare not blur or miss a single note! To play this
music with just the right spirit, you must put yourself _en rapport_
with the epoch in which it was written--the era of crinoline, powdered
wigs, snuffboxes and mincing minuets. I don't mean to say Mozart's music
is not emotional; it is filled with it, but it is not the emotion of
to-day, but of yesterday, of more than a century back.

"For myself, I love Mozart's music. One of my greatest successes was in
a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Orchestra. I afterward remarked to
one of my colleagues that it had been one of the most difficult tasks I
had ever accomplished. 'Yes, when one plays Mozart one is so _exposed_,'
was his clever rejoinder."

(7) How do you keep repertoire in repair?

"If you mean my own, I would answer that I don't try to keep all my
pieces up, for I have hundreds and hundreds of them, and I must always
save time to study new works. A certain number are always kept in
practise, different programs, according to the requirements of the hour.
My method of practise is to play slowly through the piece, carefully
noting the spots that are weak and need special treatment. To these I
give a certain number of repetitions, and then repeat the whole to see
if the weak places are equal in smoothness to the rest. If not, they
must have more study. But always slow practise. Only occasionally do I
go through the piece at the required velocity.

"My pupils are always counseled to practise slowly. If they bring the
piece for a first hearing, it must be slowly and carefully played; if
for a second or third hearing, and they know it well enough to take it
up to time, they can play it occasionally at this tempo before coming to
me. But to constantly play a piece in rapid tempo is very harmful; it
precludes all thought of analysis, of _how_ you are doing it. When you
are playing at concert speed, you have no time to think of fingering,
movement or condition--you are beyond all that. It is only in slow
practise that you have time and opportunity to think of everything.

"As an illustration, take the case of a pianist in a traveling concert
company. He must play the same pieces night after night, with no
opportunity to practise between. For the first few days the pieces go
well; then small errors and weak spots begin to appear. There is no time
for slow practise,