Liszt’s contemporaries in piano-virtuosity are almost forgotten. Their name vanishes like a dream. Others succeed in their place; generations press eagerly on each other’s heels. There was the wild and headstrong Mortier de Fontaine, who was the first to venture on playing Beethoven’s Op. 106 in public. Döhler, Dreyschock, Rosenhain, Jaell and his wife, Wilhelmina Clauss-Savardy, Sophie Menter, like her in objectivity, the more vigorous Annette Essipoff, afterwards the wife of Leschetizki, who now holds the very centre of piano-teaching in Vienna. In our time are Madame Carreño, so masculine in her convincing interpretations, and Clotilde Kleeberg, her opposite, so sympathetic and delicate, the truly womanly executant of Schumann and Chopin. Madame Essipoff was a pupil of Anton Rubinstein, from whom a by-stream ran out alongside of the world-embracing school of Liszt. Rubinstein’s and Bülow’s playing represented the difference which was bound to arise between the classical and the spiritual interpretation of piano-works. Rubinstein was the great subjective artist, who gave way entirely to the mood of the moment, and could rush on in an instant in such a way as to leave no room for the cool criticism of a later hour. But Bülow was the great objective artist, the teacher and unfolder of all mysteries, the unraveller of the knottiest points in Beethoven’s latest works, which he understood to their innermost details. In his playing the intellect had the gratification of clear-cut sharpness, while the heart retained the emotion long after the artist left the platform. Both artists were in their kind finished and complete, and both were of incalculable influence on whole generations. The impressionist Rubinstein and the draughtsman Bülow had each the technique which suited him. The one rushed and raved, and a slight want of polish was the natural result of his impressionist temperament; the other drew carefully the threads from the keys, occasionally showing them with a smile to his audience, while every tone and every tempo stood in ironbound firmness, and every line was there before it was drawn. [Illustration: Hans von Bülow. Taken in the year 1879.] [Illustration: Last Portrait of Rubinstein.] [Illustration: Bülow on his deathbed. Cairo, 1894.]