Who was the greatest piano teacher of the 19th century?

The candidates for this prize must include Chopin, Liszt, Leschetizky, the lesser known Ludwig Deppe, and Rubinstein (Anton).
Form a teacher does one seek a cogent method, or the passing on of a bright flame, burning and hard to contain?
About Chopin we have many comments from pupils, collected in a wonderful book by Eigeldinger, which I came across quite by chance in the town where it was published when I was giving a recital in Neuchatel in 1989. Chopin book. Chopin's teaching methods were geared toward refined, musical, singing, supple playing. With his high prices and aristocratic manner, Chopin was the teacher of choice for the female Parisian aristocrat, as witness the dedicatees of the majority of his piano music (eg Madame la Baronne de Rothschild for Waltz Op 64). But he did not leave a strong team of publically performing disciples to carry the flame.
Liszt did attract many ambitious male pupils, including Sauer, Siloti, Rosenthal, da Motta; and with Liszt one has a stronger sense of a lineage of playing (via for example Siloti to Rachmaninoff, or d'Albert to Dohnanyi to Ervin Nyiregyházi) but descriptions of his classes, while inspiring, are not the sort of thing you can put in a bottle and replicate.
Likewise Leschetizky  and Anton Rubinstein - fine pianists both, but in an inspirational rather than a methodical style. Rubsinstein's star pupil Josef Hofmann asked him how he should play a certain note and got the reply 'play it with your nose for all I care - so long as it sounds right!" According to Artur Schnabel there was no such thing as  a Leschetizky method, but this did not stop some of Leschetizky's pupils attempted to cash in on his cachet! eg Leschetizky Method (?!)

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As of today I am awarding first prize to Ludwig Deppe, whose Deppe Method is EXCELLENT. It makes sense, and unifies disparate elements of the playing process, such as the needs for elegant movement, effortlessness, concentration on musical tone. Granted it was written over a hundred years ago; but the instrument of the piano has not changed, and his advice can be taken with a pinch of salt here and there. Having read probably 150 books on piano playing, I think his is the best.

Vasily Safonoff

I love researching piano music at London's British Library!
There is a really good atmosphere among the researchers of all ages, plus the cafe does the most enormous pear and chocolate muffins!
I was curious to learn more about the Russian pedagogue Safonoff - I remember one of my teachers Yonty Solomon mentioning him. Here's a helpful quote from a 1915 book of his.


 "A chord must never be be prepared in a stiff position, for then the sound becomes hard and wooden. The chord must, so to speak, be hidden in the closed hand, which opens, in falling from above for the necessary position, just at the moment of striking the keyboard. This means that the chord must be ready in the thought of the player before the hand opens. This was the secret of the incomparable beauty of sound in the chords of Anton Rubinstein whose playing the author of this book had the good fortune to watch closely for many years."






p 27 Vasily Safonoff
New Formula for the Piano Teacher and Piano Student
pub Chester , London 1915

Anton Rubinstein

A transcription of words by (possibly) the greatest pianist after Liszt:
"the purpose of art is to uplift and spiritualise, not necessarily to entertain... art is aristocratic, not democratic... music demands a consecration, a cultus in the temple to which only the initiated are admitted: she demands to be the chosen of the elect, to possess somewhat of the mysterious".
Rubinstein demanded that pupils learn to sing, for without an understanding of breathing and phrasing, piano playing degenerates into mere fingerwork.

acknowledgements to Larry Sitsky, "Anton Rubinstein" pp18-22

Sofronitsky and Rachmaninoff

I cannot resist sharing more comments by these wonderful artists about the nature of musical inspiration and soufulness:

First of all, a performance requires a will. A will- meaning to want a lot, to want more than you have now, more than you can give. For me the entire effort is strengthening the will. Here is all: rhythm, sound, emotion. Rhythm should be soulful. The whole piece should live, breathe, move as protoplasm. I play-and one part is alive, full of breath, and another part nearby may be dead because the live rhythmic flow is broken. Rachmaninoff, for instance, could create a rhythmic pulse that was unfailingly alive. He had the enormous artistic will of a genius. He had a greater will than any of the modern pianists. The same with Anton Rubinstein... [who] had an enormous will for hearing, for rhythmic life. And another point, most important: the more emotionally you play, the better, but this emotionality should be hidden, hidden as in a shell. When I come on stage now, I have «seven shells» under my tuxedo, and despite this I feel naked. So, I need fourteen shells. I have to wish to play so well, live so fully, as to die and still feel as if I have not played. I have nothing to do with this.

http://www.sofronitsky.com/publications/publication-03.html

Rachmaninoff said:
"Real inspiration must come from within: nothing from outside can help. The best in poetry, the greatest of painting, the sublimest of nature cannot produce any worthwhile result if the divine spark of creative faculty is lacking within the artist….
[the listener] should] “paint for themselves what the music most suggests"

Urspirit

Dinu Lipatti once said, very wisely, that it is more important to interpret music in the correct spirit than to spend time worrying about the historically correct musical text ('Urspirit not Urtext). The authentic original musical text does not really exist: Chopin, for example, would send his manuscripts to three different publishers, each one receiving a different version from the composer, who would be frequently revising his music, and amending his pupils' scores with yet another variant of the same piece. How can one even think about a definitive score? The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

In modern conservatoires pupils are trained to play the correct notes. This is, sadly, a grave misinterpretation and trivialization of the intentions of classical composers.
Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt, to name but three, would all perform their music spontaneously, with strong feeling, leaving an indelible impression on their listener. It was not uncommon for audience members to faint during a performance by Liszt, as did Anton Rubinstein. Wrong notes were of no consequence - the strength of feeling, a spell cast on the audience, now that is worth going for.

Chopin's advice to pianists was not to practise for more than two hours; to listen to opera in order to develop a singing tone at the keyboard; and in between times to view works of inspiring beauty, such as paintings in art galleries.

The modern pianist, who has often been misled by conservatoires and betrayed by the whole system which seeks to 'commoditise' music, is practising 8 hours a day, worried silly about hitting a wrong note (why 'hit' any note at all?), playing Beethoven's Tempest Sonata without ever viewing Shakespeare's play of the same name which inspired it. And we are wondering why audiences are feeling unmoved?!

Schumann wrote about the Philistines who were controlling and commoditising art, and saw his role as the little man, David, who could stand up to them, and speak out for genuine contemporary art, if only for a small group of fellow believers. He could this group the 'Davidsbundler', and wrote a piece called Davidsbundlertanze for them.