Tausig, the pupil of Liszt, who by his brilliant technique and his extraordinary sense for style was the wonder of his contemporaries, left behind him various good arrangements and compositions perhaps too obvious in their virtuosity. He was born in Warsaw and died at thirty. He would have meant to our time a teaching power of the first magnitude. The crown of piano-playing in our time has been won by Eugene d’Albert, born in 1864, a small man with giant power, a loveable person of astonishing artistic seriousness. He was a pupil of Liszt, and on him the mantle of Liszt has fallen in our generation. His greatest virtue is his classic temperament. In his memory rest safely stored the greatest works from Bach to Tausig. If he takes one out, he takes with it the sphere in which it stayed unspoilt--the style of its execution. The piece stands fast in its construction; not a phrase appears inorganic, not a rhythm accidental. The seriousness of Brahms’s Concertos, the murmuring of Chopin’s Berceuse, the Titanic power of his A minor Étude, the grace of Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne, the solemnity of Bach, move under his hand in the concert, without one taking the least from another. It is objectivity, but we do not cry out for subjectivity; it is personality, but we do not miss the _rapport_ with eternity. [Illustration] Liszt’s pupils Reisenauer and Stavenhagen endeavoured on a similar ground to play a part as more general interpreters. But chance and change played them many tricks. Others, again, had and have their special excellencies. Paderewski, idolised in England and America, is the delicate, emotional, drawing-room player; Sauer, the bravura pianist; Siloti, the interpreter of Russian piano-music; Friedheim, the Liszt-player; Karl Heymann, the graceful. Barth, the pupil of Bülow, is severe; Rosenthal, an amazing technician; Ansorge, one of the most intellectual; Gabrilowitsch, who drives the horses of Rubinstein; Vladimir von Pachmann, with all his extravagancy, at least plays Chopin’s Mazurkas with absolute faithfulness to their national character; Busoni shows great passion; Lütschg has an extraordinarily strong wrist; the miraculous child Paula Szalit transposes fugues on the spot; Josef Hofmann, once an “infant prodigy,” is now an astonishingly individualistic artist; and Eduard Risler has an inimitable soft touch. Since the triumphs of Planté, indeed, Risler is the first French pianist to achieve a universal renown. He is a pupil of the eminent Parisian master Diémer. He has discovered those last delicate _nuances_ which lie precisely between tone and silence. His tones seem not to begin and not to cease; they are woven out of ethereal gossamer. While d’Albert plays with the whole upper body, seeks the keys and rivets them fast, breaks the sforzatos, and soothes the pianissimos; Risler is a statue at the piano, externally a Stoic;