the greatest lucidity in presentation, and naturally a certain elasticity of phrasing.  Rhythms need not be distorted, nor need there be absurd and vulgar haltings, silly and explosive dynamics.  Chopin sentimentalized is Chopin butchered.  He loathed false sentiment, and a man whose taste was formed by Bach and Mozart, who was nurtured by the music of these two giants, could never have indulged in exaggerated, jerky tempi, in meaningless expression.  Come, let us be done with this fetish of stolen time, of the wonderful and so seldom comprehended rubato.  If you wish to play Chopin, play him in curves; let there be no angularities of surface, of measure, but in the name of the Beautiful do not deliver his exquisitely balanced phrases with the jolting, balky eloquence of a cafe chantant singer.  The very balance and symmetry of the Chopin phraseology are internal; it must be delivered in a flowing, waving manner, never square or hard, yet with every accent showing like the supple muscles of an athlete beneath his skin.  Without the skeleton a musical composition is flaccid, shapeless, weak and without character.  Chopin’s music needs a rhythmic sense that to us, fed upon the few simple forms of the West, seems almost abnormal.  The Chopin rubato is rhythm liberated from its scholastic bonds, but it does not mean anarchy, disorder.  What makes this popular misconception all the more singular is the freedom with which the classics are now being interpreted.  A Beethoven, and even a Mozart symphony, no longer means a rigorous execution, in which the measure is ruthlessly hammered out by the conductor, but the melodic and emotional curve is followed and the tempo fluctuates.  Why then is Chopin singled out as the evil and solitary representative of a vicious time-beat?  Play him as you play Mendelssohn and your Chopin has evaporated.  Again play him lawlessly, with his accentual life topsy-turvied, and he is no longer Chopin—­his caricature only.  Pianists of Slavic descent alone understand the secret of the tempo rubato.

I have read in a recently started German periodical that to make the performance of Chopin’s works pleasing it is sufficient to play them with less precision of rhythm than the music of other composers.  I, on the contrary, do not know a single phrase of Chopin’s works—­including even the freest among them—­in which the balloon of inspiration, as it moves through the air, is not checked by an anchor of rhythm and symmetry.  Such passages as occur in the F minor Ballade, the B flat minor Scherzo—­the middle part—­the F minor Prelude, and even the A flat Impromptu, are not devoid of rhythm.  The most crooked recitative of the F minor Concerto, as can be easily proved, has a fundamental rhythm not at all fantastic, and which cannot be dispensed with when playing with orchestra. ...  Chopin never overdoes fantasy, and is always restrained by a pronounced aesthetical instinct. ...  Everywhere the simplicity of his poetical inspiration and his sobriety saves us from extravagance and false pathos.

Kleczynski has this in his second volume, for he enjoyed the invaluable prompting of Chopin’s pupil, the late Princess Marceline Czartoryska.