It was the grand manner in its most chaotic form. A musical volcano belching up lava, scoriæ, rocks, hunks of Beethoven--the Appassionata Sonata it happened to be--while the infuriated little Vulcan threw emotional fuel into his furnace. The unfortunate instrument must have been a mass of splintered steel, wood, and wire after the musical giant had finished. It was a magnificent spectacle, and the music glorious. Eugen d'Albert, whether he is or isn't the son of Karl Tausig--as Weimar gossip had it; Weimar, when in the palmy days every other pianist you met was a natural son of Liszt--or else pretended to be one--has more than a moiety of that virtuoso's genius. He is a great artist, and occasionally the magic fire flares and lights up the firmament of music. I think it was in 1879 that Rafael Joseffy visited us for the first time; but I didn't hear him till 1880. The reason I remember the date is that this greatly beloved Hungarian made his début at old Chickering Hall (then at Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street); but I saw him in Steinway Hall. Another magician with a peculiarly personal style. In the beginning you thought of the aurora borealis, shooting-stars, and exquisite meteors; a beautiful style, though not a classic interpreter then. With the years Joseffy deepened and broadened. The iridescent shimmer was never absent. No one played the E minor Concerto of Chopin as did Joseffy. He had the tradition from his beloved master, Tausig, as Tausig had it from Chopin by way of Liszt. (Tausig always regretted that he had never heard Chopin play.) Joseffy, in turn, transmitted the tradition to his early pupil, Moriz Rosenthal, in whose répertoire it is the most Chopinesque of all his performances. And do you remember the Chevalier de Kontski, Carl Baermann, Franz Rummel, S. B. Mills--who introduced here so many modern concertos--the huge Norwegian Edmund Neupert, who lived at the Hotel Liszt, next door to Steinway Hall, Constantin von Sternberg, and Max Vogrich, the Hungarian with the Chopin-like profile? In the same school as Joseffy is the capricious De Pachmann; with Joseffy I sat at the first recital of this extraordinary Russian in Chickering Hall (1890). Joseffy, with his accustomed generosity of spirit--he was the most sympathetic and human of great virtuosi--at once recognised the artistic worth of Vladimir de Pachmann. This last representative of a school that included the names of Hummel, Cramer, Field, Thalberg, Chopin, the little De Pachmann (he was then bearded like a pirate) captivated us. It was all miniature, without passion or pathos or the grand manner, but in its genre his playing was perfection; the polished perfection of an intricately carved ivory ornament. De Pachmann played certain sides of Chopin incomparably; capriciously, even perversely. In a small hall, sitting on a chair that precisely suited his fidgety spirit, then, if in the mood, a recital by him was something unforgettable.