Time and again at Weimar I heard Liszt play. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century. Liszt was what the Germans call an _Erscheinung_--an epoch-making genius. Taussig is reported to have said of him: "Liszt dwells alone upon a solitary mountain-top, and none of us can approach him." Rubinstein said to Mr. William Steinway in the year 1873: "Put all the rest of us together and we would not make one Liszt." This was doubtless hyperbole, but nevertheless significant as expressing the enthusiasm of pianists universally conceded to be of the highest rank. There have been other great pianists, some of whom are now living, but I must dissent from those writers who affirm that any of these can be placed upon a level with Liszt. Those who make this assertion are too young to have heard Liszt other than in his declining years, and it is unjust to compare the playing of one who has long since passed his prime with that of one who is still in it. In the year 1873 Rubinstein told Theodore Thomas that it was fully worth while to make a trip to Europe to hear Liszt play; but he added: "Make haste and go at once; he is already beginning to break up, and his playing is not up to the standard of former years, although his personality is as attractive as ever." In March, 1895, Stavenhagen and Remenyi were dining at my house one evening, and the former began to speak in enthusiastic terms of Liszt's playing. Remenyi interrupted with emphasis: "You have never heard Liszt play--that is, as Liszt used to play in his prime"; and he appealed to me for corroboration, but, unhappily, I never met Liszt again after leaving Weimar in July, 1854. The difference between Liszt's playing and that of others was the difference between creative genius and interpretation. His genius flashed through every pianistic phrase, it illuminated a composition to its innermost recesses, and yet his wonderful effects, strange as it must seem, were produced without the advantage of a genuinely musical touch. I remember on one occasion Schulhoff came to Weimar and played in the drawing-room of the Altenburg house. His playing and Liszt's were in marked contrast. He has been mentioned in an earlier chapter as a parlor pianist of high excellence. His compositions, exclusively in the smaller forms, were in great favor and universally played by the ladies. Liszt played his own "Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude," as pathetic a piece, perhaps, as he ever composed, and of which he was very fond. Afterward Schulhoff, with his exquisitely beautiful touch, produced a quality of tone more beautiful than Liszt's; but about the latter's performance there was intellectuality and the indescribable impressiveness of genius, which made Schulhoff's playing, with all its beauty, seem tame by contrast.