<< Continued from page 3

And so his playing of Bach, as in the Italian Concerto in F, reveals Bach as if the dust had suddenly been brushed off his music. All that in the playing of others had seemed hard or dry becomes suddenly luminous, alive, and, above all, a miracle of sound. Through a delicacy of shading, like the art of Bach himself for purity, poignancy, and clarity, he envelops us with the thrilling atmosphere of the most absolutely musical music in the world. The playing of this concerto is the greatest thing I have ever heard Pachmann do,** but when he went on to play Mozart I heard another only less beautiful world of sound rise softly about me. There was the 'glittering peace' undimmed, and there was the nervous spring, the diamond hardness, as well as the glowing light and ardent sweetness. Yet another manner of playing, not less appropiate to its subject, brought before me the bubbling flow, the romantic moonlight, of Weber; this music that is a little showy, a little luscious, but with a gracious feminine beauty of its own. Chopin followed, and when Pachmann plays Chopin it is as if the soul of Chopin had returned to its divine body, the notes of this sinewy and feverish music, in which beauty becomes a torture and energy pierces to the centre and becomes grace, and languor swoons and is reborn a winged energy. The great Third Scherzo was played with grandeur,*** and it is in the scherzos, perhaps, that Chopin has built his most enduring work. The Barcarolle, which I have heard played as if it were Niagara and not Venice, was given with perfect quietude,**** and the second Mazurka of Op 50 had that boldness of attack, with an almost stealthy intimacy in its secret rhythms, which in Pachmann's playing, and in his playing alone, gives you the dance and the reverie together.***** But I am not sure that the Études are not, in a very personal sense what is most essential in Chopin, and I am not sure that Pachmann is not at his best in the playing of the Études.******

Other pianists think, perhaps, but Pachmann plays. As he plays he is like one hypnotized by the music; he sees it beckoning, smiles to it, lifts his finger on a pause that you may listen to the note which is coming. This apparent hypnotism is really a fixed and continuous act of creation; there is not a note which he does not create for himself, to which he does not give his own vitality, the sensitive and yet controlling vitality of the medium. In playing the Bach he had the music before him that he might be wholly free from even the slightest strain which comes from the almost unconscious act of remembering. It was for a precisely similar reason that Coleridge, in whose verse inspiration and art are more perfectly balanced than in any other English verse, often wrote down his poems first in prose that he might be unhampered by the conscious act of thought while listening for the music.

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** Welte Mignon C 7244-46 [piano roll]
Contrastingly, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Around Music (London 1932), reflected on the terribleness of those 'few (very few) occasions on which [Pachmann] has ventured to try conclusions with the "paramount Olympians" such as Bach, and he had the good sense generally to avoid what was so evidently beyond his range.'

*** The largest-scale Chopin Pachmann recorded was the Third Ballade, acoustically for Victor, Camden New Jersey, April 26th 1912: US single 74309, UK double D 262

**** Acoustic recording, G & T, c 1907: 05502

***** Pachmann recorded this long-standing favourite of his four times -

(1) Welte Mignon C 7206 [piano roll]

(2) G & T, c 1907: 05500 [acoustic]

(3) Victor, Camden New Jersey, November 7th 1911: US single 64224, UK double E 80 [acoustic]

(4) English HMV, London 1925: DB 861 [electric]
'An other-worldly richness, in which the earthy beat of the dance is captured with great vividness' - James Methuen-Campbell, Chopin Playing (London 1981)

****** Pachmann recorded six of the Études -

Op 10 No 5 Victor, Camden New Jersey, November 7th 1911: US double 6363,

UK double D 264 [acoustic]

Op 10 No 12 Gramophone Company (pre-Dog), London, 1909: 05517 [acoustic]

Op 10 No 12 [Chopin-Godowsky, for the Left Hand] Victor, Camden New Jersey, April 26th 1912: US single 74302 [acoustic]
'Weird and pathetic [...] a ludicrous whatnot of chopped lines, all-but-palpable desparation and wrong notes [...] how [Pachmann] achieved his reputation among serious musicians must remain a mystery' - Harold C Schonberg, The Great Pianists (New York 1963)

Op 25 No 2 Welte Mignon 1215 [piano roll]

Op 25 No 3 three versions -

(1) Columbia, London, 1915: L 1010 [acoustic]

(2) Columbia, London, 1916: L 1112 [acoustic]

(3) English HMV, London, 1925: DB 860 [electric]

Op 25 No 5 two versions -

(1) Duo Art 056 [piano roll]

(2) Victor, Camden New Jersey, April 26th 1912: US single 74318, UK double D 262 [acoustic]

Op 25 No 9 G & T, c 1907: 5566 [acoustic]

AO