THE COURIER.
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The Pianist of Pure liettson.
I believe Mark Hanibourg went do
farther west than Milwaukee, so you
have not beard bim. Ho Las been the
musical sensation of tbo hour in tho
oast, and in Pittsburg be Ecored an
overwhelming triumph. He came from
Europe unknown and little advertised,
and he has made revelations to us about
the technique of the piano, about tho
possibilities that lie in ten human fin
gers. When be tirst stepped upon the
platform of the Carnegie music hall
here, a general sigh of disappointment
went up from the audience. Here was
a little fellow, below middle height,
pink Hnd whit like a girl, slender, with
a look of callow and beardless bojish
nessabsurd in a maa who was to wres
tie with that old war horse of the con
cert stage, Rubinstein's concerto in D
minor. When he left the stage, after
the deed was done, he seemed a splen
did young giant, a youth with gif s
miraculous, a boy with the technique of
a master.
Out the purpose of this article is not
to discuss Hambourg's playing, but to
tell how a Materialist, and an Idealist
acd an Auditor breakfasted together.
It was eleven o'clock when 1 arrived at
the Hotel Schenley that stands in a big,
windy Ballefield Equare out by the Car
negie music hall. Outside, the weather
was doing everything disagreeable that
it could, snowing and blowirg and spit
ting fine frozen rain. The mud and
slush were ankle deep and the gray
folate into your bones. The instan
taneous tranFllion from this gray and
wet and cold into the red Turkish
breakfast room, where the palms grew
in a soft, even heat like, that of a
Polynesian summer, was not disagree
able. The clang of the cars was not
heard there, all those pale, anxious
faces in tho Etreet were foigotteu, and
the long, serpentine parade of black
umbrellas. The carpets were soft and
red, the linen was white, Kevin and
llambourg were waiting for mp, ready
to order breakfast. In the breakfast
room there was an air of ease and leis
ure, and a feeling of the deliberatenesB
of art. It was the morning after the
concert, but llambourg looked as fresh
as a school boy. His twenty-one years
and his boyishness were so manifest
that it was almost impossible to recog
nize in this the hero of last night's tri
umphant assault upon the piano It
seemed out of the question that the
arms and hands of this young fellow
were capable of such things. Meeting
him casually, out in the world, one
would glacce at his hea-I and figure and
say that he was a student, possibly with
a speculative bent. His shoulders are
very broad for so slight a man, and are
the seat of much o: his astonishing
power. They are slightly stooped,
which is tho mark of the student, and
his head is of the kind that nature
mcdels carefully and for a purpose
large and well-developed all over, broad
of brow, with a heavy mane of chestnut
brown hair that falls back over his coat
collar. His eyes are brown as sloest
shaded by Ion?, light lashes which give
them a peculiarly kindly and gentle
look. The rst of his face is by no
means gentle; he has a big, strong mas
teruir nose, a square jaw, and a hard,
joung mouth. In spite of the energy
and ambition and intellectual alertness
stamped upon it, one wonden where a
man with a face so boyish and undisci
plined by life ever got so mature and
well-developed a technique It seems
almost a though h-i must have cheated
time and got more out of twenty-one
years than other people.
We Bat down at the table, and the
grape fruit turned H mbourg's cenver
versation upon India, and the strange
sights one sees there and tho good
things one sets to eat there, and upon
Australia, where he has made two con
cert tours.
"I alwajs travel when I rest," ho ro
marked "It was India last time, nest
time it shall be China and Japan. O, I
must get clear out of civiliz ition to
work, out of western civilization at
least 1 think Tennyson said some
thing t.bout Sfty years of Europe using
a man up more than a cycle of Cathay.
One doesn't rush so among those older
people. Time seems less Meet, what one
can do lees important.''
One began to see that he had not
found a shorter road to fame than other,
be has only run faster and slept lee e.
I fancy that energy and ambition and
intellect, good brain-stun", explain Mark
llambourg. Ha has a greed of labor,
a passion for difficulties. His eyes clow
when be talks of work, his cheeks flush
as though he spoko of his sweetheart.
He has been overworked most of his
life. 1 notice it is only people who have
worked very little who are alwajs afraid
of overtaxing themselves. He was ill a
great deal when be was a boy, he kept
up his studies in mathematics and phi
losophy and mastered all the more gen
erally spoken European lauguagts, bo
has played in all the principal citieB of
Europe, studied two yeare under Lee
chotiszky, made two concert tours to
Australia remember the gentleman is
twenty-one and all the while bo
has been mastering his instrument, get
ting it in hand, battering away at the
techuical difficulties of the koj board,
working out that tempestuous tech
nique of hi?, like young Siegfried ham
mering at the eword Kothung.
"Did it ever occur to you, llam
bourg," said Kevin, '"how little people
in general really know of work? I
mean the people who hurry along out
side there and Bit in offices eight hours
a day and do what they are bid, and
think they toil prodigeouslj. They
simply know nothing about work, the
real work that one must drive one's
self to, where one is one's own master
and one's own fate, the work that goes
on in the nerve centres and that takes
it out of one." He began to break the
eggs into a chafing dish for a compli
cated omelette such as are dear to cer
tain tribes of the North Germans, which
it took forever to make, for Mr. Kevin
is as dainty about bis cooking as he is
about his muric, and his dishes are as
complicated as bis accompaniments.
Hambourg thrust his feet under the
table and leaned back in his chair, run
ning his fingers through his hsir.
"Work?" he ejaculated, "O, that is
everything, and that is everlasting, the
only enduring thing on the program.
One is sick or well, one is sad or happy,
one is in love or one isn't in love, one is
old or young, but one alwajs works. An
instrument is a rebellious spirit, a
wicked genii that one must be forever
subduing or be vanquished. It means
eternal warfare. I have seen the time
when it was a pleasure to be very ill, so
ill that I could not stand or sit and must
rest.'-
"Let me see,' said KeviD, "you have
been a concert soloist for nine years, and
you are twen'y-one. You can do things
in the D minor concerto that Ruben
stein himself didn't attempt when I
studied it under him. Kow I want to
know where you have founJ months
enough in the year and days enough in
the months to have annihilated the
technical difficulties of the piano in this
fashion?"
Hambourg laughed and shrugged his
broad shoulders. "Ab, that's my secret.
That is the gist of life, the heart of suc
cess, what one can get into the twenty
four hours of a day everything hinges
on that. When I was a student I worked
fourteen hours out of every day and
never more than sir of them wont to
music. The rest wero put on mathe
matics, philosophy aod history. I'm
very fond of mathematics, but fonder
still of philosophy. You'll laugh at mp,
Kevin, but I'm going to try for my de
gree in philosophy next year; I think I
can make it."
Kevin sat down and i-uehed back tho
chating dish. "A degree in philos
ophy?1' he gaspeJ. "What for? It
would be about as useful to jou as an
engineer's certificate would be to me."
"Well, I want to have it," replied
Hambourg.
"Nonsen89,boy; that's sheer vanity of
the silliest kind, sillier than a girl who
likes a string of sweethearts to show
that tho can have them. And how
much poetry do you read, young man?"
"None; I don't like it, and 1 do like
philosophy; Schopenhauer, Swedenborg,
Kant, all of them." The jouth rattled
tbe glasses in his enthusiasai. Kevin
looked grave, for he loves not the names
of the great philosophers and agnostics
and the men who kill faith. He con
fined his attention to tbe chafing dish
and brought out a big narcissus-colored
omelette.
I was moderately sure of Hambourg's
attitude toward poetry before Mr. Kevin
questioned him. but I was not sure that
his answer would be so frank. lie is
not a temperamental player, this young
Russian, and he does not pose as one.
He believes in the omnipotence of tbe
human intellect "I like the exact
physical sciencee,"he remarked, "where
one can prove everything. I have read
much philosophy, to tho detriment of
my religion, and I am unable to accept
things on faith."
" Hang up philosophy i
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet
Transport a town, reverse a prince's doom,"
quoted Mr. Kevin vaguely.
A pianist of the twentieth century,
this Mr. Hambourg, a pianist of the
atomic theory and the Darwinian laws.
Whenever there is adverse criticism
upon Mr, llambourg'n work, it is to this
elTect; that he lacks the romantic ele
ment, that for poetry and color he has
substituted speed, a wbirlwind of intel
lectual and digital gjmnastics, that he
takes the piano by storm and wins at
the cost of everything but success, that
he merely astonishes and does not truly
and deeply delight. These remarks are
all very well from people with a modest
little technique, and with only one pair
of bands for i am convinced that tbis
young fellow has an extra pair concealed
about bim somewhere.
All these criticisms, and even harsher
ones, were once made on Rosenthal, and
yet no one who has heard him play the
"Linden liaum'' can accuse bim of cold
ness or colorlessness. Like Mr. Ham
bourg, I have great faith in the human
intellect, when it is united with such in
dustry and ambition as his. Lite usu
ally softens people, as it has done Ros
enthal, and is absurd to expect mature
feeling in a boy of twenty-one who has
been busy making for himself hands of
iron strength and lightning speed.
Granted that he is not a man of "tem
perament" and he certainly does not
pose as one if I am not mistaken he
has b?en intellectually apprehensive of
things, and the mere experiences attend
ant upon living in the world will put
into his playing what Mr. Philip Hale
finds lacking. Certainly iu his mastery
of technical difficulties this joung man
stands absolutely alone, and it was
anciently remarked "to him that hath
shall be given."
The conversation ran from one thing
to another, for Mr. Hambourg is inter
ested in many things, and bis mind
never sleeps. He is, as I have said, an
unassuming young man with an im
mense faculty for application and a taste
for difficulties. It will bo interesting to
see what life does for Murk H tmbourg.
I wonder whother he will remain the
Pianist of Purj Reason, or whother soiuo
day those hur.l, white fingers of his will
grow warm upon tho keys they hnvo
mastered so perfectly, and tho conscious
ness or pojtry will come to him.
Some fancy like this must have b.'en
in Kevin's mind, fir when the cigarette
were brought on ho leaned back in hm
chair and looked at the boy fondly uud
sadly, with tho glance that men wao
havo workd acd loved and sulTorm!
and sounded the whole range of life cast
upon younger men who have it all be
fore them.
"My boy," he s ml, "you have dono so
much, eo much that is difficult. I know
what work is, and I know how to value
it. You have loft moat of tho easy
things of life until tho last. I hope you
will miss none of them. You are won
derful, sir, bjt I think you place too
much value upon more facility. I re
member ence in Paris Mine. Marchesi
sent me a note asking me to come and
hear her most gifted pupil, who has one
of the most wonderful voices in the
world, but little art and no message,
nothing to tell with all those splondid
tones. She sang and sang. When she
was through Marchesi asked her daugh
ter, Blanche, to sing. That unattrac
tive little waman with next to no voice
at all, but with her splendid art. her
lyric biuI, began to sing, and I felt as a
traveler in arid deserts when he comes
again to springs of living water and tho
green bills of home. Then I knew that
it is art, not giff, which is divine, and
that the only beauty which ever has
been or ever can be is the beauty of tho
soul."
Hambourg sat staring at his plate, his
attitude a little like Mephisto's when ho
heard the mass chanted in tbe church.
Ab Stevenson wrote toRudyard Kipling:
"Surely all tho fairy godmothers were
present at this young man's christen
ing; what will he do with their gift?"
Be Faithful.
Silent, in sullen discontent,
And bitter envious mood,
I left my work undone, and bent
My footsteps toward the wood.
There undernea'h a giant tree
Green monument of power
Breathing its faint perfume for me,
I saw a faithful flower.
Forgotten was my bitter thought,
And discontent was gone,
My waiting work again I sought,
And soon the task was done.
R. B. Morgan.
She was disappointed in love. Did he
jilt her?
Oh, no. She married the man
Town Topics.
J. R HARRIS,
No. I, Board of Trade,
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