It is the first time I ever succeeded in combining the carved and the straight line at the same time—because, of course, it is my duty to take exercise!

CHAPTER XXVII.

The Brussels Conservatoire. Steiniger. Excursion to Kleinberg.
Giving a Concert. Fräulein Timm.

PYRMONT, August 15, 1874.

Deppe has got back from Brussels, and, as you may imagine, he had much to tell about his flight into the world, particularly as he had also been to London. He had a delightful time with the professors of the Brussels Conservatoire, who were all extremely polite to him, and he heard some talented young pupils. There was one girl about seventeen, whom he said he would give a good deal to have as his pupil, so gifted is she, though her playing did not suit him in many respects. He said he could have made some severe criticisms, but he refrained—partly because he felt the uselessness of it, partly because he says "it is extraordinary how amiable one gets when young ladies are in question!" He was very enthusiastic over the violin classes. "What a bow the youngsters do draw!" he exclaimed. Dupont, the great piano teacher in Brussels, must be a man of considerable "esprit," judging from the two of his compositions that I am familiar with—the "Toccata" and the "Staccato." I used to hear a good deal about him from his pupil Gurickx, whom I met in Weimar. Certainly Gurickx played magnificently, and with a brio I have rarely heard equalled. He is like an electric battery. Quite another school, however, from Deppe's—the severe, the chaste and the classic! Extreme purity of style is Deppe's characteristic, and not the passionate or the emotional. For instance, he has scarcely given me any Chopin, but keeps me among the classics, as he says on that side my musical culture has been deficient. He says that Chopin has been "so played to death that he ought to be put aside for twenty years!"—But if Chopin were really sympathetic to him he could never say that! The truth is, the modern "problematische Natur" has no charms for a transparent and simple temperament like his.

Steiniger has been playing most beautifully lately. She has given two concerts of her own here, and has played at another. Then she rehearsed with orchestra Mozart's B flat major concerto—the most difficult concerto in the world, and oh, so exquisite! Though I had long wished to do so, I never had heard it before, and as I listened I felt as if I never could leave Deppe until I could play that! I wish you could have heard it. It is sown with difficulties—enough to make your hair stand on end! Steiniger played it with an ease and perfection truly astonishing. The notes seemed fairly to run out of her fingers for fun. The last movement was Mozart all over, just as merry as a cricket!—I doubt whether anybody can play this concerto adequately who has not studied with Deppe. The beauty of his method is that the greatest difficulties become play to you.

I love to see Deppe direct the orchestra when Steiniger plays a concerto of Mozart. His clear blue eyes dance in his head and look so sunny, and he stands so light on his feet that it seems as if he would dance off himself on the tips of his toes, with his bâton in his hand! He is the incarnation of Mozart, just as Liszt and Joachim are of Beethoven, and Tausig was of Chopin. He has a marvellously delicate musical organization, and an instinct how things ought to be played which amounts to second sight. Fräulein Steiniger said to him one day: "Herr Deppe, I don't know why it is, but I can't make the opening bars of this piece sound right. It doesn't produce the impression it ought." "I know why," said Deppe. "It is because you don't strike the chord of G minor before you begin,"—and so it was. When she struck the chord of G minor, it was the right preparation, and brought you immediately into the mood for what followed. It fixed the key.

Aside from music, Deppe, like all artists, has the most childlike nature, and I think Mozart is so peculiarly sympathetic to him because he has such a simple and sunny temperament himself. We made a beautiful excursion the other day in carriages, through the hills, to a little village far distant, where we drank coffee in the open air. Deppe, who knows every foot of the ground about Pyrmont, which he has frequented from his youth up, kept calling our attention to all the points of the scenery over and over again with the greatest delight, quite forgetting that he repeated the same thing fifty times. "That little village over there is called Kleinberg. It has a school and a church, and the pastor's name is Koehler," he would say to me first. Then he would repeat it to every one in our carriage. Then he would stand up and call it over to the carriage behind us. Then when he had got out he said it to the assembled crowd, and as I walked on in advance with Fräulein Estleben, the last thing I heard floating over the hill-top was, "The pastor's name is Koehler,"—so I knew he was still instructing some one in the fact. "I wonder how often Deppe has repeated that?" I said to Fräulein Estleben. "At least fifty times," said she, laughing. "I'm going back to him and ask him once more what the name of the pastor is." So I went back, and said, "By the way, Herr Deppe, what did you say the name of the pastor of that village is?" "Koehler," said dear old Deppe, with great distinctness and with such simple good faith that I felt reproached at having quizzed him, though the others could scarcely keep their countenances, as they knew what I was after.

I have been preparing for some time to give a concert of Chamber Music in the salon of the hotel here, and expect it to take place a week from to-day. My head feels quite lame from so much practicing, the consequence, I suppose, of so much listening. I am to play a Quintette, Op. 87, in E major, by Hummel, for piano and strings, and a Beethoven Sonata, Op. 12, in E flat, for violin and piano, and the other instruments will play a Quartette by Haydn in between. It is a beautiful little programme, I think—every piece perfect of its kind. If I succeed in this concert as I hope, I shall probably listen to Deppe's implorings and remain under his guidance another season. Deppe believes that one must go through successive steps of preparation before one is fitted to attack the great concert works. I've found out (what he took good care not to tell me in the beginning!) that his "course" is three years!! and you can't hurry either him or his method. Your fingers have got to grow into it.—I do not at all regret, with you, not having hitherto played in concert; on the contrary, I think it providential that I did not. You see, you and I started out with wholly impracticable and ridiculous ideas. We thought that things could be done quickly. Well, they can't be done quickly and be worth anything. One must keep an end in view for years and gradually work up to it. The length of time spent in preparation has to be the same, whether you begin as a child (which is the best, and indeed the only proper way), or whether you begin after you have grown up. It is a ten years' labour, take it how you will.

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