Just after I wrote you last I went to Kullak, as I told you I should, and engaged him to give me one private lesson a week. He looks about fifty, and is charming. I am enchanted with him. He plays magnificently, and is a splendid teacher, but he gives me immensely much to do, and I feel as if a mountain of music were all the time pressing on my head. He is so occupied that I have to take my lesson from seven to eight in the evening.
Tausig's conservatory closes on the first of October, and I feel very sorry, for my three grand friends, Mr. Trenkel, Mr. Weber and Mr. Beringer, are all going away, and I shall be awfully lonely without them. Weber is very handsome, and has the most splendid forehead I think I ever saw. He composes like an angel, besides being remarkably clever in every way. He will be famous some day, I know, and he belongs to the Music of the Future. Beringer is poetic, passionate and vivid. He has golden hair and golden eyes, I may say, for they are of a peculiar light hazel, almost yellow, but with a warmth and sunniness, and often a tenderness of expression that is extremely fascinating. Weber cannot speak English, and as he is from Switzerland, he speaks an entirely different dialect from the Berlinese, so that it took me some time to understand him. He is a perfect child of nature, and has a great deal of humour. He and Beringer are devoted friends, and are about my age. Trenkel is older. He has the blackest hair and eyes, and a dark Italian skin. He is intellectual and highly cultured, and at the same time such a very peculiar character that he interested me greatly. Most of his life has been spent in America: first in Boston, where he seems to know everybody, and afterwards in San Francisco, whither he is about to return. He has been studying with Tausig for two years, and is a heavenly musician, though he hasn't Beringer's great technique and passion. His conception is more of the Chopin order, extremely finely shaded and "filed out," as the Germans have it.
It was so pleasant to have these three musical friends, who all play so much better than I, as they often met and made lovely music in my little room. Weber and Beringer took tea with us only yesterday evening. Weber was in one of his good moods, and played to Beringer and me his most beautiful compositions for ever so long. We settled ourselves comfortably, one in two chairs, the other on the sofa, and enjoyed it. The Andante out of a great sonata he is composing, is perfectly lovely. It is entirely original, and different from any music I have ever heard. Then he played the second movement of his symphony, and it is the most exquisite morceau you can imagine. I asked him to compose a little piece for me, and so yesterday morning he sat down and wrote seven mazurkas, one after the other. Whether he actually gives me one is another matter, for, like all geniuses, he is not very prodigal with his gifts, and is not very easy to come at. But I would like to have even four bars written by him, for he is so individual that it would be worth keeping.
Weber looks perfectly charming when he plays. He never glances at the keys, but his large blue eyes gaze dreamily into vacancy, and his noble brow stands out white and lofty. His conception is extremely musical, but as he only practices when he feels like it (as he does everything else), he doesn't come up to the other two. Tausig burst out laughing at him at his last lesson. That individual, by the way, came back as suddenly as he went off, but announced that he would give no more lessons except to these favoured three. All the rest of us had to go begging. It didn't make so much difference to me, as I had already gone to Kullak, who is now the first teacher in Germany, as all the greatest virtuosi have given up teaching.
Kullak himself is a truly splendid artist, which I had not expected. He used to have great fame here as a pianist, but I supposed that as he had given up his concert playing he did not keep it up. I found, however, that I was mistaken. His playing does not suffer in comparison with Tausig's even, whom I have so often heard. Why in the world he has not continued playing in public I can't imagine, but I am told that he was too nervous. Like all artists, he is fascinating, and full of his whims and caprices. He knows everything in the way of music, and when I take my lessons he has two grand pianos side by side, and he sits at one and I at the other. He knows by heart everything that he teaches, and he plays sometimes with me, sometimes before me, and shows me all sorts of ways of playing passages. I am getting no end of ideas from him. I have enjoyed playing my Beethoven Concerto so much, for he has played all the orchestral parts. Just think how exciting to have a great artist like that play second piano with you! I am going to learn one by Chopin next.
Kullak is not nearly so terrible a teacher as Tausig. He has the greatest patience and gentleness, and helps you on; but Tausig keeps rating you and telling you, what you feel only too deeply, that your playing is "awful." When Tausig used to sit down in his impatient way and play a few bars, and then tell me to do it just so, I used always to feel as if some one wished me to copy a streak of forked lightning with the end of a wetted match. At the last lesson Tausig gave me, however, he entirely changed his tone, and was extremely sweet to me. I think he regretted having made me cry at the previous lesson, for just as I sat down to play, he turned to the class and made some little joke about these "empfindliche Amerikanerinnen (sensitive Americans)." Then he came and stood by me, and nothing could have been gentler than his manner. After I had finished, he sat down and played the whole piece for me, a thing he rarely does, introducing a magnificent trill in double thirds, and ending up with some peculiar turn in which he allowed his virtuosity to peep out at me for a moment. Only for a moment though, for he is much too proud and has too much contempt for Spectakel to "show off," so he suppressed himself immediately. It was as if his fingers broke into the trill in spite of him, and he had to pull them up with a severe check. Strange, inscrutable being that he is!
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BERLIN, October 13, 1870.
My room in our new lodging is a charming one. Quite large, and a front one, and there is no vis-á-vis. We look right over across the street into Prince Albrecht's Garden. It is very uncommon to have such a nice outlook, particularly in Berlin. But it is so long since I have lived among trees that at first it affected my spirits dreadfully. As I sit by my window and hear the autumn wind rushing through them, and see all the leaves quivering and shaking, and think that they have only a few short weeks more to sway in the breeze, it makes me wretched. I suppose that we shall now have two months of dismal weather.
I wish you were here to counsel me over my dresses. I have just bought two—one for a street dress, and the other for demi-evening toilette, but heaven only knows when they will be done, or how they will fit! You ought to see the biases of the dresses here! They all go zig-zag. The Berlin dressmakers are abominable. Mrs.——, of the Legation, told me that when she first came here she cried over every new dress she had made, and I could not sufficiently rejoice last winter that I had got all my things before I sailed. M. E., too, who gets all her best things from Paris, told M. she was never so happy as when her mother sent her over an "American dress."—"They are so comfortable and so satisfactory," said she.