The very large audience assembled at St. James-hall yesterday afternoon testified to the undiminished popularity of M. de Pachmann, who gave the third of a series of pianoforte recitals on that occasion. As is the custom of this and, indeed, of most pianists nowadays, he played the entire programme from memory, and never once lost the context of a tangled skein of several and widely different styles of music. The commencement of the performance with two important works of Beethoven was no doubt owing to what novelists are wont to call "a purpose". M. de Pachmann's supreme excellence in rendering Chopin has been so frequently insisted upon that the idea has grown in the popular mind of his being unable to do justice to Beethoven, who in many respects is the antipodes of the younger master. If it was the artist's intention to dispel this prejudice he fully succeeded; if he wished to show that Beethoven is, or ever could be, his specialty in the sense that Chopin and, in a minor degree, Mozart are, then his thesis was too large for his argument. M. de Pachmann is a great and a versatile artist, and whatever such an artist undertakes he does well. In this sense the Russian pianist plays Beethoven well, sometimes, indeed, to perfection. The latter epithet applies, for example, to his rendering of the 32 variations in C minor, one of Beethoven's most famous and most successful efforts in this his favourite form of composition. Nothing could have been finer than the delicacy of touch and the discrimination of thought and feeling with which each little piece stood forth in its separate character, and at the same time was made to fit in the vast frame of the entire conception. It must be owned that the sonata in F minor, op. 57, which followed, was less satisfactory. Here also the technical part was beyond reproach, and a fine dramatic spirit pervaded the whole. But the grandeur of Beethoven's intention seemed occasionally marred by a want of breadth and repose. This was especially noticeable in the principal theme of the first movement. Here also one observed certain effects of phrasing which seemed to belong to M. de Pachmann rather than to Beethoven. We are the last to find fault with individuality of execution or to set up a so-called "classical" style as final and immutable; at the same time it cannot be denied that subtleties of reading, which are allowable in Chopin or in Schumann, somehow seem to pervert the perspective of Beethoven's vast design. All this, however, is a matter of opinion. No difference of opinion, on the other hand, can exist when M. de Pachmann comes to deal with his favourite, Chopin. The manner in which he gave the dreamy nocturne (op. 37, No. 2) or the mazurka (op. 33, No. 2), with its piquant and thoroughly national nuances of rhythm, was not open to criticism. One feels that composer and executant are one, and that absolute truth of conception has been attained. It amounts almost to a truism to say that no living artist, with the exception, perhaps, of Liszt, could give these two pieces, or the scherzo (No. 3, op. 39), as they were given yesterday. All but equally perfect were some of the slight sketches of Henselt—a composer nearly akin to Chopin—which concluded the concert. Among these the Wiegenlied, the Chanson du printemps, and the final Toccatina may be held up for special praise. Frequent bursts of applause interrupted the performance, rising to a perfect ovation at the end.