Deeply German, his music synthesizes the worlds of Schumann, Brahms and Wagner, to which are added Polish idioms inherited from the art of Chopin. But our composer is not so much an "epigone, if by that we mean a dilution and dissolution of his own personality in a predominant model". Faithful to his vision
Artistic, Scharwenka, in her later years, would keep her distance from the hustle and bustle of Berlin society. An aesthetic withdrawal that does not imply an ignorance of modernity, but a refusal to "run after the new for the sake of it."