The orchestra was immense. It was carefully selected from all the orchestras in Berlin, and Stern, who directed it, had given himself infinite trouble in training it. Wagner is the most difficult person in the world to please, and is a wonderful conductor himself. He was highly discontented with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipsic, which thinks itself the best in existence, so the Berlinese felt rather shaky. The hall was filled to overflowing, and finally, in marched Wagner and his wife, preceded and followed by various distinguished musicians. As he appeared the audience rose, the orchestra struck up three clanging chords, and everybody shouted Hoch! It gave one a strange thrill.
The concert was at twelve, and was preceded by a "greeting" which was recited by Frau Jachmann Wagner, a niece of Wagner's, and an actress. She was a pretty woman, "fair, fat and forty," and an excellent speaker. As she concluded she burst into tears, and stepping down from the stage she presented Wagner with a laurel crown, and kissed him. Then the orchestra played Wagner's Faust Overture most superbly, and afterwards his Fest March from the Tannhäuser. The applause was unbounded. Wagner ascended the stage and made a little speech, in which he expressed his pleasure to the musicians and to Stern, and then turned and addressed the audience. He spoke very rapidly and in that child-like way that all great musicians seem to have, and as a proof of his satisfaction with the orchestra he requested them to play the Faust Overture under his direction. We were all on tiptoe to know how he would direct, and indeed it was wonderful to see him. He controlled the orchestra as if it were a single instrument and he were playing on it. He didn't beat the time simply, as most conductors do, but he had all sorts of little ways to indicate what he wished. It was very difficult for them to follow him, and they had to "keep their little eye open," as B. used to say. He held them down during the first part, so as to give the uncertainty and speculativeness of Faust's character. Then as Mephistopheles came in, he gradually let them loose with a terrible crescendo, and made you feel as if hell suddenly gaped at your feet. Then where Gretchen appeared, all was delicious melody and sweetness. And so it went on, like a succession of pictures. The effect was tremendous.
I had one of the best seats in the house, and could see Wagner and his wife the whole time. He has an enormous forehead, and is the most nervous-looking man you can imagine, but has that grim setting of the mouth that betokens an iron will. When he conducts he is almost beside himself with excitement. That is one reason why he is so great as a conductor, for the orchestra catches his frenzy, and each man plays under a sudden inspiration. He really seems to be improvising on his orchestra.
Wagner's object in coming here was to try and get his Nibelungen opera performed. It is an opera which requires four evenings to get through with. Did you ever hear of such a thing? He lays out everything on such a colossal scale. It reminded me of that story they tell of him when he was a boy. He was a great Shakespeare enthusiast, and wanted to write plays, too. So he wrote one in which he killed off forty of the principal characters in the last act! He gave a grand concert in the opera house here, which he directed himself. It was entirely his own compositions, with the exception of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which he declared nobody understood but himself. That rather took down Berlin, but all had to acknowledge after the concert that they had never heard it so magnificently played. He has his own peculiar conception of it. There was a great crowd, and every seat had been taken long before. All the artists were present except Kullak, who was ill. I saw Tausig sitting in the front rank with the Baroness von S. There must have been two hundred players in the orchestra, and they acquitted themselves splendidly. The applause grew more and more enthusiastic, until it finally found vent in a shower of wreaths and bouquets. Wagner bowed and bowed, and it seemed as if the people would never settle down again. At the end of the concert followed another shower of flowers, and his Kaiser March was encored. Such an effect! After the tempest of sound of the introduction the drums came in with a sharp tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Then the brass began with the air and came to a crescendo, at last blaring out in such a way as shivered you to the very marrow of your bones. It was like an earthquake yawning before you.
The noise was so tremendous that it was like the roaring of the surf. I never conceived of anything in music to approach it, and Wagner made me think of a giant Triton disporting himself amid the billows and tossing these great waves of sound from one hand to the other. You don't see his face, of course—nothing but his back, and yet you know every one of his emotions. Every sinew in his body speaks. He makes the instruments prolong the tones as no one else does, and the effect is indescribably beautiful, yet he complains that he never can get an orchestra to hold the tone as they ought. His whole appearance is of arrogance and despotism personified.
By the end of the concert the bouquets were so heaped on the stage in front of the director's desk, that Wagner had no place left big enough to stand on without crushing them. Altogether, it was a brilliant affair, and a great triumph for his friends. He has a great many bitter enemies here, however. Joachim is one of them, though it seems unaccountable that a man of his musical gifts should be. Ehlert is also a strong anti-Wagnerite, and the Jews hate him intensely.—Perhaps his character has something to do with it, for he has set all laws of honour, gratitude and morality at defiance all his life long. It is a dreadful example for younger artists, and I think Wagner is depraving them. In this country everything is forgiven to audacity and genius, and I must say that if Germany can teach us Music, we can teach her morals!
CHAPTER IX.
Difficulties of the Piano. Triumphal Entry of the Troops.
Paris.
BERLIN, June 25, 1871.
I have been learning Beethoven's G major Concerto lately, and it is the most horribly difficult thing I've ever attempted. I have practiced the first movement a whole month, and I can't play it any more than I can fly. If you hear Miss Mehlig play it, I trust you will take in what a feat it is. Kullak gave me a regular rating over it at my last lesson, and told me I must stick to it till I could play it. It requires the greatest rapidity and facility of execution, and I get perfectly desperate over it. Kullak took advantage of the occasion to expand upon all the things an artist must be able to do, until my heart died within me. "What do you know of double thirds?" said he. I had to admit that I knew nothing of double thirds, and then he rushed down the piano like lightning from top to bottom in a scale in double thirds, just as if it were a common scale.