Doubtless, M. Rachmaninoff is an accomplished and charming workman. He is almost uniformly suave and dexterous. The instances when he writes badly are not frequent. The C-sharp minor Prelude is, after all, something of a sport. No doubt, there are times, as in so many of the passages of the new version of his first piano concerto, when he seeks to dazzle with the opulence and clangor and glare of tones. However, as a rule, he writes politely. If the second concerto is a trifle too soft and elegiac and sweet, a little too much like a mournful banqueting on jam and honey, it is still most deftly and ingratiatingly made. On the whole, even though his music touches us only superficially it rarely fails to awaken some gratitude for its elegance. But there is an essential that his music wants. It wants the imprint of a decided and important individuality. In all the elaborate score of "The Island of the Dead," in the very one of M. Rachmaninoff's works that is generally deemed his best, there are few accents that are either very large or very poignant or very noble. The music lacks distinction, lacks vitality. The style is strangely soft and unrefreshing. Emotion is communicated, no doubt. But it is emotion of a second or even third order. Nor is the music of M. Rachmaninoff ever quite completely new-minted. Has it a melodic line quite properly its own? One doubts it. Many of the melodies of M. Rachmaninoff have a Mendelssohnian cast, for all their Russian sheen. Others are of the sort of sweet, spiritless silken tune generally characteristic of the Russian salon school. Nor can one discover in this music a distinctly original sense of either rhythm of harmony or tone-color. The E-minor Symphony, for all its competence and smoothness, is full of the color and quality and atmosphere of Tchaikowsky. It is Tchaikowsky without the hysteria, perhaps, but also without the energy. In all the music of M. Rachmaninoff there is something strangely twice-told. From it there flows the sadness distilled by all things that are a little useless.