Did I tell you how carried away with Bülow I was? He is magnificent, and just between Rubinstein and Tausig. I am going to hear him again on Saturday, and then I'll write you my full opinion about him. He is famous for his playing of Beethoven, and I wish you could have heard the Moonlight Sonata from him. One thing he does which is entirely peculiar to himself. He runs all the movements of a sonata together, instead of pausing between. It pleased me very much, as it gives a unity of effect, and seems to make each movement beget the succeeding one.
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BERLIN, May 30, 1872.
I wish L. were here studying piano with Kullak's son. He has one little fairy of a scholar ten years old. Her name is Adele aus der Ohe—(isn't that an old knightly name?)—and it is the most astonishing thing to hear that child play! I heard her play a concerto of Beethoven's the other day with orchestral accompaniment and a great cadenza by Moscheles, absolutely perfectly. She never missed a note the whole way through. I suppose she will become, like Mehlig, a great artist. But perhaps, like her, she won't have a great conception, but will do everything mechanically. One never can tell how these child-prodigies will turn out.—Please don't form any exalted ideas of my playing! I'm a pretty stupid girl, and go forward slowly. I never expect to play as Miss Mehlig does. If I can ever get up to Topp, I shall be satisfied. You wouldn't believe how long it takes to get to be a virtuoso unless you tried it. Mehlig, you know, studied steadily for ten years, under the best of teaching all the time, and she had probably more talent to start with than I have. Miss V. and Mr. G. have been here five years studying steadily, and they are no farther than I am now. Not so far. It makes all the difference in the world what kind of hand and wrist a person has. Mine, you know, were pretty stiff, and then it is a great disadvantage to begin studying after one is grown up. One ought to be learning while the hand is forming.
I am just now learning that A minor concerto of Schumann's that Topp played at the Handel and Haydn Festival in Boston. The cadenza is tough, I can tell you. That is the worst of these concertos. There is always a grand cadenza where you must play all alone and "make a splurge." I don't know how it feels to be left all at once without any support from the orchestra. It is bad enough when Kullak lies back in his chair and ceases accompanying me. He plays with me on two pianos, and I get so excited that my wrists tremble. He is a magnificent pianist, and his technique is perfect. There's nothing he can't do. Like all artists, he is as capricious and exasperating as he can be, and, as the Germans say, he is "ein Mal im Himmel und das nächste Mal im Keller (one time in heaven and the next time in the cellar)!" He has a deep rooted prejudice against Americans, and never loses an opportunity to make a mean remark about them, and though he has some remarkably gifted ones among his scholars, he always insists upon it that the Americans have no real talent. As far as I know anything about his conservatorium just now, his most talented scholars are Americans. There is a young fellow named Sherwood, who is only seventeen years old, and he not only plays splendidly but composes beautifully, also. In my own class Miss B. and I are far ahead of all the others. Kullak will praise us very enthusiastically, and then when some one plays particularly badly in the class he will say to them, "Why, Fräulein, you play exactly as if you came from America." It makes Miss B. and me so indignant that we don't know what to do. Of course we can't say anything, for he addresses this remark in a lofty way to the whole class. Miss V. couldn't bear Kullak, and the other day, when she and Mr. G. were taking leave of him to go to America, she let him see it. He said to her, "And when shall I see you again?" "Never," exclaimed she! We have only one way of revenging ourselves, and that is when he gives us the choice of taking one of his compositions or a piece by some one else, always to take the other person's. For instance, he said to me, "Fräulein, you can take Schumann's concerto or my concerto." I immediately got Schumann's.
The other night I went to see a great ballet-dancer. Her name is Fräulein Grantzow, and she is the court dancer at St. Petersburg, where I've heard that the ballet surpasses everything of the kind in the world. This danseuse is a wonder, and they say there has never been such dancing since the days of Fanny Ellsler. She has the figure of a Venus, and the most expressive face imaginable. When she dances, it is not only dancing, but a complete representation of character, for she plays a rôle by her motions just the same as if she were an actress. I have seen many a ballet, but I never conceived what an art dancing is before. I saw her in "Esmeralda," a ballet which is arranged from Victor Hugo's romance and modified for the stage. Fräulein Grantzow took the part of Esmeralda. In the first act a man is condemned to death, but is pardoned on condition that one of the women present will promise to marry him. The women, represented by about fifty ballet dancers, come up one after the other, contemplate the poor victim, pirouette round him, and reject him in turn with a gesture of contempt. At last Esmeralda (a gypsy) comes dancing along, asks what is the matter, and on being told, has compassion on the poor wretch, and promises to marry him in order to save him from his fate.
When the time came for Grantzow to appear, the crowd of dancers suddenly divided, and she bounded out from the back of the stage. Such an apparition as she was! In the first place her toilettes surpassed everything, and she appeared in a fresh dress in every act. In this first one she had on a most dazzling shade of green gauze for her skirt. From her waist fell a golden net-work, like a cestus, with little golden tassels all round. She wore a little scarlet satin jacket all fringed with gold coins, and a broad golden belt, pointed in front, clasped her waist. On her head was a tiny scarlet cap, also fringed with coins, and she had some golden bangles round her neck. In her hand was a tambourine from which depended four knots of coloured ribbons with long ends. Shaking her tambourine high in the air, out she sprang like a panther, made one magnificent circuit all round the stage, and after executing an immensely difficult pas with perfect ease, she suddenly posed to the audience in the most ravishing and impossible attitude and with the most captivating grace conceivable. Anything like her élan, her aplomb, I never saw. Such a daring creature! Well, I cannot tell you all the things she did. She is a perfect Terpsichorean genius. All through the first act she danced very slowly, merely to show her wonderful grace, and the beauty and originality of her positions. She had a way of folding her arms over her breast and dancing with a dreamy step that was quite different from anybody else, and it produced an entrancing effect. Through the second and third acts she made a regular crescendo, just to display her technique and show what she could do. All the other dancers seemed like blocks of wood in comparison with her.—Fräulein Grantzow is said to be between thirty-five and thirty-eight years old. As the papers said, her art shows the perfection that only maturity can give. The men are all crazy over her, as you may imagine, and she was showered with bouquets as large as the top of a barrel. The play of her features was as extraordinary as the play of her muscles. Her whole being seemed to be the soul of motion.
CHAPTER XIV.
A Rising Organist. Kullak. Von Bülow's Playing.
A Princely Funeral. Wilhelmj's Concert.
A Court Beauty.
BERLIN, July 1, 1872.