writing to my mother, says:

'Brahms is recognised in Germany as the greatest musician living. It is said to be most difficult to get him to play; however, after every lesson he plays piece after piece. He is a delightful man—so simple, so kind and quiet. He lives in a beautiful situation amongst the hills, and cares only for seclusion, and time to devote himself to composition. He was pleased the other day by F.'s asking him about a passage in Goethe that she could not comprehend, and went into it in a way which delighted her. With all his genius he is thoroughly practical. Punctual to a minute in his lessons, and of extreme delicacy.'

It was my happiness to hear, amongst other things, his readings of many of the forty-eight preludes and fugues, and his playing of them, and especially of the preludes, impressed me with such force and vividness that I can hear it in memory still. His interpretation of Bach was always unconventional and quite unfettered by traditional theory, and he certainly did not share the opinion, which has had many distinguished adherents, that Bach's music should be performed in a simply flowing style. In the movements of the suites he liked variety of tone and touch, as well as a certain elasticity of tempo. His playing of many of the preludes and some of the fugues was a revelation of exquisite poems, and he performed them, not only with graduated shading, but with marked contrasts of tone effect. Each note of Bach's passages and figures contributed, in the hands of Brahms, to form melody which was instinct with feeling of some kind or other. It might be deep pathos, or light-hearted playfulness and jollity; impulsive energy, or soft and tender grace; but sentiment (as distinct from sentimentality) was always there; monotony never. 'Quite tender and quite soft,' was his frequent admonition to me, whilst in another place he would require the utmost impetuosity.

He loved Bach's suspensions. 'It is here that it must sound,' he would say, pointing to the tied note, and insisting, whilst not allowing me to force the preparation, that the latter should be so struck as to give the fullest possible effect to the dissonance. 'How am I to make this sound?' I asked him of a few bars of subject lying for the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of the left hand, which he wished brought out clearly, but in a very soft tone. 'You must think particularly of the fingers with which you play it, and by-and-by it will come out,' he answered.

The same kind of remarks may be applied to his conception of Mozart. He taught me that the music of this great master should not be performed with mere grace and lightness, but that these effects should be contrasted with the expression of sustained feeling and with the use of the deep legato touch. Part of one of my lessons was devoted to the Sonata in F major—

etc.
[Listen]

Brahms let me play nearly a page of the first movement without making any remark. Then he stopped me. 'But you are playing without expression,' said he, and imitated me, playing the same portion, in the same style, on the upper part of the piano, touching the keys neatly, lightly, and unmeaningly. By the time he left off we were both smiling at the absurd performance.

'Now,' he said, 'with expression,' and he repeated the first few bars of the subject, giving to each note its place as an essential portion of a fine melody. We spent a long time over the movement that day, and it was not until the next lesson, after I had had two, or perhaps three, days to think myself into his conception, that I was able to play it broadly enough to satisfy him. At the close of the first of these two Mozart lessons I said to him: 'All that you have told me to-day is quite new to me.' 'It is all there,' he replied, pointing to the book.

Brahms, in fact, recognised no such thing as what is sometimes called 'neat playing' of the compositions either of Bach, Scarlatti, or Mozart. Neatness and equality of finger were imperatively demanded by him, and in their utmost nicety and perfection, but as a preparation, not as an end. Varying and sensitive expression was to him as the breath of life, necessary to the true interpretation of any work of genius, and he did not hesitate to avail himself of such resources of the modern pianoforte as he felt helped to impart it; no matter in what particular century his composer may have lived, or what may have been the peculiar excellencies and limitations of the instruments of his day.

Whatever the music I might be studying, however, he would never allow any kind of 'expression made easy.' He particularly disliked chords to be spread unless marked so by the composer for the sake of a special effect. 'No arpége,' he used invariably to say if I unconsciously gave way to the habit, or yielded to the temptation of softening a chord by its means. He made very much of the well-known effect of two notes slurred together, whether in a loud or soft tone, and I know from his insistence to me on this point that the mark has a special significance in his music.

Aware of his reluctance to perform his compositions, I let some weeks pass before I asked him to play me something of his own. When I at length ventured to do so, he objected: 'Not mine; something by another composer.' But I had resolved to carry my point. 'No, no,' I insisted; 'a composition played by the composer himself is what I wish to hear,' and my importunity gained the day. He gave me a splendid performance of a splendid theme with variations, which, as I found out some months afterwards, was from the now familiar string Sextet in B flat. It was the first time I had heard anything of Brahms' composition with the exception of one or two songs, and it raised in me a tumult of delight. Probably I said to him little beyond thanks, but the power of the music and the performance must have worked itself in me to some manifest effect, for on my taking my seat directly after the lesson at the table d'hôte of the Hôtel Bär, the village inn where my father and I used to dine, a lady of our acquaintance exclaimed: 'What is the matter with you to-day that you look so excited?' I remember answering her: 'Brahms has just played me something quite magnificent—something of his own—and it keeps going in my head.'

Since then I have heard the movement times innumerable in England and on the Continent, performed by various combinations of artists, but I never listen to it without being carried back in thought to the gardener's house on the slope of the Cäcilienberg where, in my blue-papered, carpetless little room, Brahms sat at the piano and played it to me. The scent of flowers was borne in through the open lattice-windows, of which the green outside sun shutters were closed on one side of the room to keep out the blazing August sun, and open on another to views of the beautiful scenery.

The merits of our respective views had been the subject of some friendly argument soon after my arrival at Lichtenthal. Brahms had declared that no prospect from any windows in the village could possibly be as fine as his, whilst I was equally sure that mine must be quite unrivalled. Two of my windows looked right across the valley of the Oos as far as the plain of Strassburg, and showed, in fine weather, the distant peaks of the Vosges glimmering in the sunlight. Two others commanded a prospect of the pine-covered ranges of Black Forest hills. The first time Brahms came to my rooms, in order to give me a lesson, the variety and loveliness of my view drew from him an