Perhaps In
Your Next Number You Will Put In A Short Appreciative Notice Of
Litolfff's Appearance Here.
Rubinstein left for Leipzig at midday today.
The performance of
his Symphony ["Ocean"; given for the first time, November 16th,
1854, at the Gewandhaus Concert for the Poor.] is fixed for the
16th at the Gewandhaus, and later on he will also appear as a
pianist. Hartel, Hofmeister, and Schott have already taken about
thirty of his manuscripts, which is about the smaller half of his
portfolio! -
About the Berlin "Tannhauser" affair I cannot for the moment say
more than that I have always made Wagner feel perfectly at
liberty to put me on one side, and to manage the matter himself,
according to his own wishes, without me. But so long as he gives
me his confidence as a friend, it is my duty to serve him as a
discreet friend - and this I cannot do otherwise than by giving no
ear to transactions of that kind, and letting people gossip as
much as they like. Don't say anything more about it for the
present in your paper. The matter goes deeper than many
inexperienced friends of Wagner's imagine. I will explain it to
you more clearly by word of mouth. Meanwhile I remain passive -
for which Wagner will thank me later on.
Yours most truly,
F. Liszt
N. B. - Pohl wishes his Minnesinger article not to be signed with
the name Hoplit, but with the letters R. P., when it appears in
your paper.
126. To Anton Rubinstein
Your "Dialogue Dramatique" a propos of your "Ocean" is a little
chef-d'oeuvre, and I shall keep it, in order, later on, to put it
at the disposal of some future Lenz, who will undertake your
Catalogue and the analysis of the three styles of Van II. We
laughed with all our hearts, a deux, in the little blue room of
the Altenburg, and we form the most sincere wishes that Gurkhaus,
[Principal of the music firm F. Kistner in Leipzig.] the deus ex
machine, may have come to put you out of the uncomfortable state
of suspense in which the Gewandhaus public did you the honor to
leave you. To tell the truth, this decrescendo of applause, at
the third movement of your Symphony, surprises me greatly, and I
would have wagered without hesitation that it would be the other
way. A great disadvantage for this kind of composition is that,
in our stupid musical customs, often very anti-musical, it is
almost impossible to appeal to a badly informed public by a
second performance immediately after the first; and at Leipzig,
as elsewhere, one only meets with a very small number of people
who know how to apply cause and effect intelligently and
enthusiastically to a piece out of the common, and signed with
the name of a composer who is not dead. Moreover I suspect that
your witty account is tainted with a species of modesty, and I
shall wait, like the general public, for the accounts in the
newspapers in order to form an opinion of your success.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 112 of 244
Words from 58025 to 58543
of 127569
