The Russian composers of the last half century have almost without exception written something for the pianoforte; but their national characteristics have found a more vivid expression in orchestral music and music for the theatre than in keyboard music. Their technique has been the technique of Liszt and Chopin, and a great part of them have written in the style of Schumann. The national fervor did not kindle all to the same intensity. Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky represent almost two nationalities, and yet even Tschaikowsky held himself aloof from the enthusiasms of the great Five. From the pen of Glinka, the leader of the Russians, their first pioneer, there was no pianoforte music. But his friend, the equally famous Dargomyzhsky, wrote a Tarantella, for three hands,[38] which Liszt transcribed. Thus enter the Russians into the history of pianoforte music, at a time when Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt had about exhausted the possibilities of expression on the keyboard in terms of music as it was then, and was for fifty years more to be understood. Nevertheless each of the great five, Balakireff, Borodine, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and César Cui, has contributed more or less to the keyboard. The ‘Islamey Fantasy’ of Balakireff is perhaps the most brilliant and the most significant work of the lot. The themes are original, but they have the strong Oriental coloring which has given to much of Russian music its splendor. This fantasy has a sort of barbaric power. The first section is built up out of countless repetitions of a short motive, most brilliantly scored, which whirls and whirls like the dervishes until we are mad as they. And this is resumed again, after a somewhat more tranquil section, and whirled more and more madly, until the time seems to break, and give way to a stamping. It is the work of a lover of folk-music as well as a man who knew the piano almost as well as Liszt did. Balakireff’s pianoforte transcription of Glinka’s ‘A Life for the Czar’ is a masterpiece of its kind, and there are transcriptions of Glinka’s songs as well. There are two scherzos, of which the second--in B-flat minor--is remarkable; a Concert Waltz dedicated to d’Albert, and a wonderful ‘Dumka.’ The others of this group were far less able pianists, and their contribution to the literature of the instrument was small. There is a set of variations by Rimsky-Korsakoff, and also a group of short pieces, opus 11, in the style of Schumann; and Moussorgsky wrote a _Kinderscherz_ and an _Intermezzo_. There is a touch of Russian in these. The works of César Cui are even more cosmopolitan. They include a set of preludes, two suites, one dedicated to Liszt, the other to Leschetizsky, and a number of simple pieces, among them twelve _Miniatures_. But the _Dumka_ and the _Islamey_ of Balakireff stand far above all the other pianoforte music written by the five, not only from the point of view of style, but as an expression of national spirit.