As his name indicates, Seghers was a Belgian.  He started life as a violinist and was one of Baillot’s pupils.  His execution was masterly, his tone admirable, and he had a musical intelligence of the first order.  He had every right to a first rank among virtuosi, but this man, herculean in appearance and tenacious in his purposes, lost all his power before an audience.

He had a dream of giving to lovers of music the last of Beethoven’s quartets, which were considered at the time both unplayable and incomprehensible.  In the end he planned a series of concerts at which, despite my age—­I was only fifteen—­I was to be the regular pianist.  He planned to give in addition to these quartets, some of Bach’s sonatas and Reber’s and Schumann’s trios.  I spoke of this plan to his mother-in-law one day as she was peacefully embroidering at the window, and told her how pleased I was at the thought of the concerts.

“Don’t count on it too much,” she told me.  “He’ll never give them.”

When everything was ready, he invited some thirty people to listen to a trial performance.  It was wretched.  All the depth of tone had gone from his violin as well as the skill from his fingers....  The project was abandoned.

It was left for Maurin to make something out of these terrible quartets.  Maurin had peculiar gifts.  He had a lightness of bow which I have never seen equalled by anyone and a lightness and charm which enchanted the public.  But I can say in all sincerity that Seghers’s execution was even better.  Unfortunately for him I was his only listener.

Madame Seghers was a woman of great beauty, unusually intelligent and distinguished.  She had been one of Liszt’s pupils and was a pianist of first rank.  But she was even more timid than her husband—­a single listener was sufficient to paralyze her.  When Liszt was teaching Madame Seghers, he came to appreciate her husband’s real worth and entrusted his daughter’s musical education to him.  This is sufficient indication of the esteem in which Liszt held Seghers.  So it was not surprising that he gave me valuable and greatly needed suggestions in regard to style and the piano itself, for his friendship with Liszt had given him a thorough understanding of the instrument.

I first saw and heard Liszt at Seghers’s house.  He had reappeared in Paris after long years of absence, and by that time he had begun to seem almost legendary.  The story went that since he had become chapel-master at Weimar he was devoting himself to grand compositions, and, what appeared unbelievable, “piano music.”  People who ought to have known that Mozart was the greatest pianist of his time shrugged their shoulders at this.  As a climax it was insinuated that Liszt was setting systems of philosophy to music.

I studied Liszt’s works with all the enthusiasm of my eighteen years for I already regarded him as a genius and attributed to him even before I saw him almost superhuman powers as a pianist.  Remarkable to relate he surpassed the conception I had formed.  The dreams of my youthful imagination were but prose in comparison with the Bacchic hymn evoked by his supernatural fingers.  No one who did not hear him at the height of his powers can have any idea of his performance.