modern Frenchman's composition passes along on its triumphant career, like some fine lady, radiant in natural beauty and superbly attired, witty, graceful, charming, and in every way effective--perhaps all the more effective for being a little heartless. In the performance of this music Mr. Ysaye was altogether in his glory. His astonishing warmth and depth of tone lent fresh eloquence to such new phase of the solo part. He made his instrument sing his Andantino theme with ravishing sweetness, and his overwhelming technical power enabled him to revel in the rushing and flying passages of the Mephistophelean finale. Everything was magnificent, including even the harmonies in the Coda of the slow movement, and the Concerto ended in a blaze of triumph. There is only one fault to be found with Mr. Ysaye, namely, that he makes everything sound modern. [Sidenote: =Ysaye and Busoni.= _February 6, 1902._] If another and older master of the violin is commonly described--as it were, _emeritus_--as greatest living violinist, it is unquestionably to Mr. Ysaye that the title belongs in its full sense. Unparalleled warmth, richness, and bouquet of tone, added to sovereign mastery of technique and a marvellous temperament, full of fiery energy and yet apparently incapable of exaggeration--such are the most obvious qualities of Mr. Ysaye's art. He is not a genuine classic, like Joachim. Bach and Beethoven he plays in virtue of infallible artistic _savoir vivre_; but he is obviously in fuller sympathy with a Sonata or Concerto by Saint-Saëns, a Suite by Vieuxtemps, or a Fantasia by Wiéniawski. Yet that artistic _savoir vivre_ is so complete that it is nearly always impossible to find specific fault with his renderings of the classics. This was the case yesterday in the Bach Sonata, which headed the programme. Each of the four movements declared the mastery of the string player, no less than of the pianist, Mr. Busoni--real kindred spirits of Bach and Beethoven. The Vieuxtemps Suite, too, was given with such beauty of tone that the superficiality of the composition was entirely disguised, the slow movement sounding almost as though Bach had written it. In the concluding sonata--a late work by Saint-Saëns--it is scarcely necessary to say that the violin-playing was perfect. Perhaps some of the listeners remembered a performance by the same violinist of Saint-Saëns's Third Concerto at a Hallé Concert not long ago. Again yesterday we were treated to such playing as bewilders the senses and seemed to place the transcendental cleverness of the French composer on a level with the real imaginative power of greater men. Mr. Ysaye was extremely well disposed--in fact, quite at his best--and was rapturously applauded. As an extra piece he gave Beethoven's Romance in G, the rendering being above criticism.