"I call it mere brutal noise," I replied, and he winked at his friend, who went to the piano without my invitation. Now, I did not care for the looks of this one, and I wondered if he, too, would display his biceps and his triceps with such force. But he was a different brand of the modern breed. He played with a small, gritty tone, and at a terrible speed, a foolish and fantastic derangement of Chopin's _D-flat Valse_. This he followed, at a break-neck _tempo_, with Brahms' dislocation of Weber's _C major Rondo_, sometimes called "the perpetual movement." It was all very wonderful, but was it music?
"Gentlemen," I said, as I arose, pipe in hand, "you have both studied, and studied hard," and they settled themselves in their bamboo chairs with a look of resignation; "but have you studied well? I think not. I notice that you lay the weight of your work on the side of technics. Speed and a brutal _quasi_-orchestral tone seem to be your goal. Where is the music? Where has the airy, graceful valse of Chopin vanished? Encased, as you gave it, within hard, unyielding walls of double thirds, it lost all its spirit, all its evanescent hues. It is a butterfly caged. And do you call that music, that topsy-turvying of the Weber _Rondo_? Why, it sounds like a clock that strikes thirteen in the small hours of the night! And you, sir, with your thunderous and grandiloquent Liszt _Ballade_, do you call that pianoforte music, that constant striving for an aping of orchestral effects? Out upon it! It is hollow music--music without a soul. It is easier, much easier, to play than a Mozart sonata, despite all its tumbling about, despite all its notes. You require no touch-discrimination for such a piece. You have none. In your anxiety to compass a big tone you relinquish all attempts at finer shadings--at the _nuance_, in a word. Burly, brutal, and overloaded in your style, you make my poor grand groan without getting one vigorous, vital tone. Why? Because elasticity is absent, and will always be absent, where the fingers are not allowed to make the music. The springiest wrist, the most supple forearm, the lightest upper arm cannot compensate for the absence of an elastic finger-stroke. It is what lightens up and gives variety of color to a performance. You are all after tone-quantity and neglect touch--touch, the revelation of the soul."