The farewell recital which M. de Pachmann, previous to his departure for the Continent, gave at St. James's-hall yesterday afternoon makes it desirable to say a few words of recapitulation with regard to the remarkable career of that artist in England. To Mr. Ganz belongs the credit of having introduced M. de Pachmann to a London audience at one of his orchestral concerts. The name of the Russian pianist at the time was known comparatively little abroad, and not at all in this country. His success on that occasion at once placed him among the first living representatives of his instrument, and that position he has continued to hold ever since. His artistic claims, from the first warmly advocated by us, have been recognized by all competent judges; and what is more, he succeeds not only in pleasing connoisseurs, but also in gaining the sympathies of the general public, in the widest significance of the term. He is, for example, among the few virtuosi who are able to fill St. James's-hall by unaided efforts, as was shown again yesterday afternoon, when the large concert-room was crowded almost to the last seat. London, like Paris or Berlin, is no longer a favourable hunting ground for artists who come to us in quest of golden guineas; it has been exploité too much by European talent of all kinds. What such artists, or at least the more prudent among them, seek in the metropolis is the prestige which in provincial towns may be turned to lucrative account. But with M. de Pachmann it is different. Whether he plays in London or in Manchester or Birmingham, his name has the same attraction everywhere, to a degree unknown in England, as regards pianists, since the days when Rubinstein was among us. The phenomenon is at first sight all the more surprising, as M. de Pachmann's qualities are by no means those which usually command popular success. He does not belong to the impressioniste school formed by those who are clever imitators of the manner of Liszt without the genius of Liszt; his physical strength is not very great, and there are scores of pianists more brilliant and more demonstrative. Neither is his range of interpretation of a very comprehensive kind. He deals with the so-called classical masters in a manner which betrays the thorough musician and, as a matter of duty, adorns each of his programmes with the names of Bach, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn. But with none of these composers does he betray that genuine sympathy which is the artistic equivalent of personal affection. Only in Mozart's tender and graceful nature there are features which appeal to the pianist in a more special sense, and the same remark applies to his rendering of that most delicate of modern writers for the pianoforte, Henselt. But M. de Pachmann is greatest, he is, in fact, unique when he has to deal with Chopin. Field somewhat coarsely called Chopin a talent de chambre de malade, and there is this truth in the remark that Chopin's artistic egotism sometimes reaches a degree which, to a robust mind, may well appear morbid. Every turn of phrasing, every modulation, the very shakes and gruppetti and fioriture are in Chopin marked by a distinct individuality which no other composer has managed, and which few have even tried to imitate. All this M. de Pachmann renders with a perfection of style and with a degree of poetic insight which can only spring from the most absolute harmony between composer and interpreter and which fully explains the unanimous opinion of those who have heard Chopin play his own music that M. de Pachmann's manner resembles, in the minutest detail, that of the great master himself. The fact is, no doubt, to some extent explained by the pianist's Slavonic nationality; but apart from this, it implies a distinct individual gift on the artist's part. This gift, at the same time, explains the secret of M. de Pachmann's success. It is that individual genius which seems to grow rarer and rarer in the same measure as the mere mechanism of the art becomes more common. The programme of yesterday's concert does not call for detailed notice. It comprised more or less familiar pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Henselt, Cramer, and Liszt, rendered by M. de Pachmann with perfect command over the resources of his art. But the climax of the performance was marked by the Chopin selection including the master's most sustained effort, the sonata in B flat minor.