Vladimir de Pachmann
His Art and Personality
Paradoxical as it may appear, Vladimir de Pachmann's biography offers the most
barren field imaginable for the searcher after the secret of the man's magic
art.
All that has been gathered definitely about the early training of the greatest
Chopin player of his day is, that save for his father, an amateur violinist,
and Professor Dachs of the Vienna Conservatorium, De Pachmann's only other
teacher was himself, or as he puts it: "I learned from the sunshines and
shadows of life; both have been my lot."
To intimates, however, De Pachmann has confided that he followed his first
great successes in Russia, Paris, London, Germany, and Denmark, with a
prolonged period of monastic retirement devoted to the most rigid
self-discipline and prodigious technical practice.
When he re-appeared, De Pachmann's American debut in 1890 proved to be a
revelation to the piano-playing world, and since then further tours in this
country — the latest in 1904 — and concerts in all the capitals of
Europe have served to augment his fame to a point beyond which no pianist ever
achieved.
The psychologist who peers into the souls of artists finds a fascinating
but elusive problem in that of Valdimir de Pachmann. He is an emotional
chameleon reflecting in his playing the whole gamut of musical moods and
tenses.
No less handicapped than the psychologist is the historian of the tonal art
who tries to fix an exact estimate of De Pachmann's personality.
There exists no guage by which to measure him for he is like nobody else and
nobody else is like him.
The mere biographer faces the most baffling task of all, for the closest
scanning of the musical mile-posts along the early road traveled by De
Pachmann reveals neither the source of his unique direction nor the manner in
which he finally reached his miraculous goal.
Some writers on music attempt to explain ethnologically his marvellous
interpretations of Chopin, the Pole, for De Pachmann was born in Odessa,
Russia, July 27th, 1848.
However, the mystery is deepened by that very connection, for history records
the names of many other piano-playing sons of Russia — some even native
to Chopin's soil — who never were able to read into the master
tone-poet's music such elfish humor and dulcet morbidezza, such impetuous
joys and strange sorrows as Vladimir de Pachmann reveals in the mazurkas,
polonaises, nocturnes, scherzos, ballades, preludes, valses, etudes, and
sonatas of Frédéric Francois Chopin.
Chopin and De Pachmann! Does the one name ever suggest itself without the
other in closest association? And yet the subtle nature of the communion
defies any and every attempt at analysis. It was that keen and fine-sensed
critic, Philip Hale, who wrote: "A phrase of Chopin, to borrow a fine thought
of Hazlitt inspired by a Mozartian melody, when it is invoked by De Pachmann,
comes from the air and then returns."
Beside Hale every other critic of prominence in the musical world has
lavished the most ecstatic praise on De Pachmann's art, and he imspired such
masters of the prose phrase as Huneker, Symons, and Blackburn, to pen in
their published books rhetorical rhapsodies which have taken their place in
the enduring musical literature of all time.
When De Pachmann returns here next season for his farewell American tour,
it will be found that he is still the same necromancer whose playing never
palls, whose music has a witchery all its own, and whose potent personality no
audience can resist.
De Pachmann plays the Baldwin Piano exclusively.
