slowly, raising my fingers high and straight from the knuckle joint.
This gives me great clearness and firmness. In rapid passage work the
action is reduced, but the position remains. I am said to have a clear,
pearly touch, with quite sufficient power at my command for large works.

"After five years of study with my first teacher, Rudolph Heim, a pupil
of Moscheles, I entered the Moscow Conservatory, and continued my
studies under Professor Pabst, brother and teacher of the composer of
that name. I was then ten years old. Professor Pabst was very
conservative, very strict, and kept me at work on the music of the older
masters. This kind of music suits me, I think; at least I enjoy it. Even
here I still clung to my ideas of holding my hands and of touching the
keys, and always expect to do so.

"I remained with this professor about six years and then began my public
career.

"You ask about my present studies, and how I regulate my practise.
During my periods of rest from concert work, I practise a great deal--I
wish I could say all the time, but that is not quite possible. I give an
hour or more a day to technical practise. As to the material, I use
Chopin's Études constantly, playing them with high-raised, outstretched
fingers, in very slow tempo. One finds almost every technical problem
illustrated in these études; octaves, arpeggios, scales in double thirds
and sixths, repeated notes, as in number 7, broken chords and passage
work. I keep all these études in daily practise, also using some of the
Liszt _Études Transcendantes_, and, of course, Bach. The advantage of
using this sort of material is that one never tires of it; it is always
interesting and beautiful. With this material well in hand, I am always
ready for recital, and need only to add special pieces and modern music.