Among all kinds of solo playing it is pianoforte playing, the high standard of which is specially characteristic of our age. The violin was perfected in the seventeenth century, and, though the technique of the violin has been further developed in comparatively recent times by Paganini and others, there has not been during the nineteenth century any other advance in a particular kind of musical performance at all comparable with the advance in pianoforte playing, which, apart from improvements in the construction of the instrument, is generally attributed to the genius of Liszt. It is sometimes forgotten that Liszt did not stand quite alone. He was the most brilliant pupil of a certain school, namely the Czerny school. But Czerny, though probably the greatest of all pianoforte pedagogues, does not stand quite alone as the father of modern playing. There was another great pedagogue with an independent system, namely Friederick Wieck, whose most brilliant pupil was his daughter Madame Schumann. The modern art of pianoforte playing may be traced back to one or other of those two remarkable teachers, Czerny and Wieck. The most famous representative of the Czerny-Liszt school at the present day is Mr. Paderewski, and the most famous representative of the other--the Wieck-Schumann school is Mr. Borwick. For a long time it was supposed that no member of the English-speaking races was capable of taking rank among first-rate solo-players, and it is therefore cheering to find Mr. Borwick--a true-born Britisher--holding the position that he now holds. For his first piece Mr. Borwick chose, appropriately enough, the Schumann Concerto for pianoforte, which Rubinstein considered a no less happy inspiration than Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. It is the most important of all Schumann's works for pianoforte, and Mr. Borwick, as a pupil of the Schumann school is, of course, completely in his element when playing it. Yesterday he seemed thoroughly well-disposed, and he played the whole work with admirable purity of style and insight into its delicate ingenuities and romantic beauties. On his second appearance Mr. Borwick played a Ballade by Grieg in the form of fifteen variations on a Norwegian air. The air is plaintive and pretty, and in the harmonization is strongly stamped with the composer's individuality. Some of the variations, too, contain examples of graceful movement, but there is not much more to be said for them. They are not for a moment to be compared with the typical modern works in variation form, such as Mendelssohn's "Variations Sérieuses," Schumann's "Etudes Symphoniques," or the variations on a chorale of Haydn by Brahms. The one really fine work of considerable scope for pianoforte by Grieg is the Concerto. All that was possible, however, to be made of the Ballade was made of it by Mr. Borwick. [Sidenote: =Siloti.= _March 9, 1900._]