I once asked Paderewski to play for me his new set of songs, and he promptly did so.

But MacDowell always was 'out of practice,' or had some other excuse, generally a witticism or bit of sarcasm at his own expense.

I am sorry now that I did not urge him with more persistence, for he might have yielded in the end, and I would have got a more _intime_ idea of his playing; for after all a musical tete-a-tete like that is preferable to any public hearing.

I never heard Grieg play at a concert, but I am sure that the hour I sat near him in his Bergen home, while he played and his wife sang, gave me a better appreciation of his skill as an interpreter than I could have got in a public hall with an audience to distract his attention.

One afternoon I called on Saint-Saens at his hotel after one of his concerts in New York.
Talking about it, he sat down at the piano, ran over his _Valse Canariote_, and said: 'That's the way I _ought_ to have played it!' "MacDowell was quite right in saying that he was out of practice; he generally was, his duties as professor allowing him little time for technical exercising; but once every few years he set to work and got his fingers into a condition which enabled them to follow his intentions; and those intentions, it is needless to say, were always honourable! He never played any of those show pieces which help along a pianist, but confined himself to the best he could find.
"Usually the first half of a recital was devoted to the classical and romantic masters, the second to his own compositions.