One of his ever-present fears was that in performance his fingers would run away with him.

And many hours were spent in endeavours to control such an embarrassing tendency.

This extraordinary velocity, acquired in the Paris Conservatory, and from his friend and teacher, Carl Heymann, of Frankfort, invariably set his listeners agape, and was always one of the chief sensations at his concerts.
"But for this finger speeding and for his other technical acquirements as well, MacDowell cared little, except as they furthered his one absorbing aim.

He was heart and soul a composer, and to be able to play his own music as he heard it in his inner ear was his single spur to practice.

From the time of his complete immersion in composition, his ideas of pianistic effects, of tone colour, gradually led him farther and farther away from conventional pianism.