The recital given yesterday evening at the Free Trade Hall seems to have been the last of Mr. Paderewski's art that we are likely to hear for some time. He is not expected to visit Manchester again during the next few years, and the occasion therefore seems fitting for a more general discussion of his playing than is usual in a simple notice of a recital. No doubt Mr. Paderewski is, on the whole, the most distinguished executive musician now before the public. The Paderewski "craze" in England and America is not a mere matter of fashion and folly, but is shared by experts and brethren of the craft, many of whom are irresistibly fascinated by Mr. Paderewski's playing, even while they disapprove of much that he does. Why will he insist on using a pianoforte with so hard a tone? Why is the skelp of his hand on the keys so frequently audible from the most distant point of the hall, as a sound quite separate from the musical notes? Why does he never play Bach? Why does he always play Liszt's second Rhapsodie? Such are a few among the searchings of heart to which Mr. Paderewski's public performances give rise, and to none of them--probably--is there a complete and satisfactory answer. The shallow-toned instrument admits of greater clearness in the bass, and has a more scintillating kind of brilliancy in the upper octaves, and Mr. Paderewski, who likes all passage-work a little staccato, naturally favours it. The rage of his "con gran bravura" lends greater charm to his _grazioso_ style, by the principle of contrast--a point on which he often lays emphasis by rapid alternations of the two styles. Iteration of show pieces, such as the second Rhapsodie, is excusable in a pianist who is incessantly touring the two worlds and playing to all sorts and conditions of men by land and by sea. As to the Bach question we know nothing. He may even have played Bach in other parts of the world. Mr. Paderewski's distinguishing quality is a certain extraordinary energy--not merely a one-sided physical, or even a two-sided physical and intellectual, energy; it is of the fingers and wrists, of the mind, the imagination, the heart, and the soul, and it makes Mr. Paderewski the most interesting of players, even though to the extreme kind of specialist, absorbed in problems of tone-production, he is not the most absolute master of his instrument at the present day. His art has a certain princely quality. It is indescribably _galant_ and _chevaleresque_. He knows all the secrets of all the most subtle dancing rhythms. He is a reincarnation of Chopin, with almost the added virility of a Rubinstein. No wonder such a man fascinates, bewilders, and enchants the public! Greatly surpassed by Busoni in the interpretation of Beethoven, by Pachmann in the touch that persistently draws forth roundness, sweetness, and fulness of tone, and by Godowsky in the mastery of intricate line and the power of sucking out the very last drop of melody from every part of a composition,