MAGGIE TEYTE (Soprano)
LAFFITTE (Pianoforte)
A LTHOUGH Schumann was twenty before he decided to devote himself wholly to music. ho made his first appearance at such an early ago that he had to stand up at the pianoforte instead of sitting down to it. When he did begin in earnest, he was so keen to become a first-rate performer as quickly as possible, that he invented a device for strengthening the weak fingers. But he discovered to his cost that there are no short cuts to mastery of a musical instrument, and he crippled one of his fingers for life. In understanding of the instrument and its possibilities, however, he was not only a real master, but a brilliant innovator who did much to extend the scope and power of the pianoforte. He discovered effects of richness and fullness which had hardly been dreamed of before, and some of his pieces have almost a sense of orchestral power. Many of them, even the smallest, are based on poetic ideas, though it is supposed that he added the names after they were completed, rather than that ho composed them to illustrate any definite picture. But however that may be, no one has over had any doubt of the wholly satisfying way in which each of these fantasy pieces brings to the hearer's thought the image which its name suggests.