The year of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876, was a memorable one for visiting pianists. I heard not only Hans von Bülow, but also two beautiful women, one at the apex of her artistic career, Annette Essipoff (or Essipowa) and Teresa Carreño, just starting on her triumphal road to fame. Essipowa was later the wife of Leschetizky--maybe she was married then--and she was the most poetic of all women pianists that I have heard. Clara Schumann was as musical, but she was aged when I listened to her. Essipowa played Chopin as only a Russian can. They are all Slavs, these Poles and Russians, and no other nation, except the Hungarian, interpret Chopin. Probably the greatest German virtuoso was Adolf Henselt, Bavarian-born, though a resident of Petrograd. He had a Chopin-like temperament and played that master's music so well that Schumann called him the "German Chopin." Essipowa, I need hardly tell you, communicated no little of her gracious charm to Paderewski. He learned more from her plastic style than from all the precepts of Leschetizky.
On a hot night in 1876, and in old Association Hall, I first saw and heard Teresa (then Teresita) Carreño. I say "saw" advisedly, for she was a blooming girl, and at the time shared the distinction with Adelaide Neilson and Mrs. Scott-Siddons of being one of the three most beautiful women on the stage. Carreño, still vital, still handsome, and still the conquering artist, till her death last spring, was in that far-away day fresh from Venezuela, a pupil of Gottschalk and Anton Rubinstein. She wore a scarlet gown, as fiery as her playing, and when I wish to recall her I close my eyes and straightway as if in a scarlet mist I see her, hear her; for her playing has always been scarlet to me, as Rubinstein's is golden, and Joseffy's silvery.
The French group I have heard, beginning with Theodore Ritter, who came to New York in company with Carlotta Patti; Planté--still living and over eighty, so I have been told by M. Phillipp; Saint-Saëns, whom I first saw and heard at the Trocadéro, Paris, with his pupil, Montigny-Remaury; Clotilde Kleeberg, Diémer, Risler; the venerable Georges Mathias, a pupil of Chopin; Raoul Pugno, who was veritably a pugnacious pianist, Cécile Chaminade, Marie Jaell, and her corpulent husband, Alfred Jaell.