Emil von Sauer

"Emil Sauer was also a good pianist, good technique, style. Very good fingers. He was a Liszt pupil. He was at his best in salon music — Chopin waltzes, things like that. But I heard him play a very good, very correct Op. 109. Some of the Liszt pupils were horrible. One I never could understand was Siloti. He played very badly. Another Liszt pupil was the famous Moriz Rosenthal, and I hated his playing. He couldn't make one nice phrase. I don't understand how he got his fame. Perhaps when I heard him he was too old to have any control. He had dexterity but he had no real technique, and I don't think he really knew how to play the piano. He didn't make music."

"During his recital last night I experienced so many contradictory emotions that it is difficult to define them. In the first instance, a profound joy when I realized that this artist had not altered (and I believe he never will). Nothing in his playing or attitude betrays his [nearly] eighty years loaded with success and achievement. At the same time I felt a great sadness. How is it possible that Emil Sauer must play in the small Salle Erard, despite his glorious past, when a Brailowsky or Uninsky can pack the Salle Pleyel? It must be due to public opinion, which remains eternally superficial, dependent on trends made fashionable by snobbery and publicity. In the case of Sauer, there may be another explanation - it is as strange as it is sad to reflect that the present generation has never heard of him, while his own generation has faded away. No matter how paradoxical it may seem this is the truth. Emil Sauer, the international virtuoso and pupil of Franz Liszt, is being forced, at the end of a brilliant career, to attempt to make a 'name' for himself. Such, at least, is the situation in France!"