Ray Fairfield wrote:

> [Gottschalk] lacked discipline and focus, and refused to play much
> of anybody else's music, focusing primarily on promoting his own.
> At any rate, an interesting fellow who left some engaging music.

That was Harold Schoenberg's opinion, which is, in my opinion, WRONG.

If you read Gottschalk's book, "Notes of a Pianist," it becomes hard to
accuse him of "lack of discipline and focus," as he spent the better
part of his life enduring great hardships to perform his own music
because he believed in it's value and wanted to introduce it to people,
and he felt there were already enough virtuosos playing the same old
stuff by the German masters.

He also thought that his own writing for piano was better than
Beethoven's.  Whether true or not, he acted on his principles, not
out of laziness, as Schoenberg implies.

As to whether Gottschalk was the "king of pianists" this is a subjective
judgment, but he was certainly extremely renowned and beloved in his
time, and if you read contemporary reviews of his playing he was
definitely considered among the top three or four pianists living at
the time.

I had to correct this misimpression, which most readers of Schoenberg
will take at face value, and urge you not to believe everything you
read, especially if it comes from only one source.

Larry Lobel
Virtuoso Piano Service