Utterly dissimilar as Messrs. Ysaye and Busoni are in temperament and artistic character, they meet as master musicians, and the association is in the highest degree interesting. The one is all sense and the other all spirit, and one feels that only the immensely high accomplishment of both makes the association possible. Mr. Busoni's solo was that most capricious and austere Sonata, Beethoven's 109th work. It was all incomparably well rendered, and the Variations in the last movement, which ultimately spin themselves into a kind of Fantasia, were a prodigious revelation of technical power. It is long since such a pianoforte performance has been heard in this city--a performance stamped by austere beauty and lofty ideality, and free from all earthly elements. What other pianist at the present day, we venture to ask, could give us such a thing? [Sidenote: =Kubelik.= _November 5, 1902._] Popularity such as Mr. Jan Kubelik, the young Bohemian violinist, at present enjoys makes it very difficult to criticise his performance. He has not to meet the same conditions as other violinists. Thousands of persons who care little or nothing for music attend his recitals merely because he is a recognised society pet, and he commands a fee that makes it impossible for orchestral societies to engage him. The restrictions imposed by this state of things are obvious. He can only play with pianoforte accompaniment, or with none at all; he is obliged to adhere almost entirely to music that is light in style and of only secondary artistic worth, and during a certain proportion of each recital he has to give himself up entirely to sensationalism. Thus, after hearing him play through three complete recital programmes, we do not feel qualified to express more than a very fragmentary opinion upon his art. That he has all the ordinary technique of the instrument at his fingers' ends is a notorious fact. His tone is never remarkable for volume, but often for sweetness. His truth of intonation in the midst of intricate passage-work is remarkable, and gives the sense of hearing a rare kind of satisfaction. His memory seems to be entirely trustworthy, and his manner is free from affectation; but as to his musical conception, we can only say that it is quite adequate to the interpretation of such a charming piece of light, racy, and popular music as Grieg's third Sonata. The one scrap of Bach that he played yesterday--the unaccompanied Prelude in E major--was not specially well done, and how he plays Beethoven, Mozart, or any of the great masters we do not know at all. His most _recherchés_ effects of tone Mr. Kubelik seems to hold in reserve for the encore pieces. In the allegretto movement of the Grieg Sonata--a most tenderly homesick and lovesick little northern Romance--he did not let his violin sing with all the sweetness of which it is capable, as was afterwards shown in the arrangement of Schubert's