Pachmann Chicago 1907 program

AMERICAN FAREWELL TOUR
OF THE
WORLD'S GREATEST PIANIST

Vladimir De Pachmann

picture of Pachmann, facing right

Direction: ARNOLD SOMLYO		Season: from September, 1907
Carnegie Hall, New York		to May, 1908

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ORCHESTRA HALL

[CHICAGO]

Sunday Afternoon, November 3rd [1907]

Seats: 50c., $1.00. Box Seat $1.50

Direction: F. WIGHT NEUMANN


Program

∮ ∮

	Sonata, A major	Dominico Scarlatti
	Fantasia. No. 18, C minor	Mozart
	Perpetuum Mobile, Op.24, C major	Weber

∮

	Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 14, E minor	Mendelssohn
	Romanze, Op. 28, No. 2, F sharp	Schumann
	Gavotte, Op. 14, A flat minor	G. Sgambati
	La Fileuse, Op. 157, No. 2, F sharp	Raff-Henselt
	En Automne, Op. 36, No. 4, B flat minor	Moszkowski
	Polka, Op. 9, No. 2, B flat major	Tschaikowsky

∮

	Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 2, D flat	Chopin
	Prelude, Op. 28, No. 19, E flat major	Chopin
	Prelude, Op. 28, No. 16, B flat minor	Chopin
	Etude, Op. 25, No. 1, A flat major	Chopin
	Etude, Op. 25, No. 3, F major	Chopin
	Mazurka, Op. 56, No. 2, C major	Chopin
	Grande Valse Brilliante, Op. 34, No. 1, A flat	Chopin

The Baldwin Pianoforte Used

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.