Deppe's darling Fannie Warburg gave a concert here last month, and she, also, got a pretty poor criticism, and for the same reason, viz.: people haven't the musical sense to appreciate her—at least in my opinion. The action of her hands on the piano is grace itself, and the elasticity of her wrist is wonderful. Her touch completely realizes Deppe's ideal of "letting the notes fall from the finger-tips like drops of water," and she executes better with the left hand, if that be possible, than with the right! At any rate, there is no difference. It is the most heavenly enjoyment to hear her, and you feel as if you would like to have her go on forever. And yet, I don't believe she will make a great career. She has not fire enough to make the public appreciate the immensity of her performance. No rush—no abandon! She has no presence either, but is a timid, meek, childlike little maiden—docility itself, but a made player, as it were, not a spontaneous one. Such is life! To me, her playing is the purest music—"die reine Musik"—and the bigger the hall the more that tone of hers rolls out and fills it!
———
HAMBURG, March 1, 1875.
I wish I could write up Deppe's system for publication, but it is a very difficult thing to give any adequate idea of. Fräulein Timm tells me it is only comparatively recently that he has perfected it himself to its present point (though he has long had the conception of it), and that accounts for its not being known. He was completely buried in Hamburg, where there is no scope for art. I believe his ambition is to found a School of this exquisitely pure and perfect and almost idealized piano-playing, which may serve as a counterpoise to the warmer and more sensuous prevailing one—sculpture as contrasted with painting!
I have been chiefly studying Kammer-Musik (Chamber Music) this winter—that is, trios, quartettes, etc. Fräulein Timm is giving me such a training as I never had before. She has the most astonishing talent for teaching, and has reduced it to a science. I don't play anything up to tempo under her—always slow, slow, slow. She really dissects every tone, and shows me when and why it doesn't sound well. My whole attention is now bent upon tone. Ah, M., that's the thing in playing!—To bring out the soul there is in the key simply by touching it, as the great masters do.—It is the pianist's highest art, though amid the dazzle of piano pyrotechnics the public often forget it.
I am just finishing Beethoven's third Trio, Op. 1. The last movement is the loveliest thing! It makes me think of a wood in spring filled with birds. One minute you hear a lot of gossiping little sparrows twittering and chippering, and then comes some rare wild bird with a sort of cadence, and then come others and whistle and call. It is bewitching, and the most perfect imitation of nature imaginable; gay—so gay! as only Beethoven can be when he begins to play. Everything is on the wing. It is, of course, exceedingly difficult, because, like all this pure, classic music, to make any effect it has to be executed with the utmost perfection. I am so infatuated with it that when I get through practicing it, I feel as if I were tipsy!
These Beethoven trios are a perfect mine in themselves. Each one seems to be entirely different from all the rest. There are twelve in all, and Deppe wants me to learn them all. Think what a piece of work! This enormous amount of literature that you must have to form a repertoire—the trios, quartettes, quintettes, concertos, etc., it is that makes it so long before one is a finished artist. And then you must consider the hours and hours that go to waste on studies, just to get your hand into a condition to play these masterpieces. Oh, the arduousness of it is incalculable! I often ask myself, "What demon has tempted me here?" as I sit and drudge at the piano. I play all day, take a walk with L. in the afternoon, and at night tumble into bed and sleep like a log—that is, when my hardest of beds and shivering room will let me sleep. That is my life, day after day. I only see the people of the house at meals.
I am the only lady in this family. All the other boarders are very young men, almost boys, who are here to learn German or commerce. There are three South Americans, one Portugese, one Brazilian, one Russian and one Frenchman. I hear Spanish and French all the while, but no English, and with the German it is very confusing.—I feel very sorry for all these young fellows, their lives are so bare and disagreeable, and so wholly devoid of any influence that can make them better or happier. As for our landlady, it would take a Balzac to do justice to such a combination. She is a good housekeeper. The cooking is excellent, and my room (when warm) is pleasant. Indeed, the Hamburg standard of housekeeping is much higher than in Berlin. Things are much daintier. But her power of making you physically and mentally uncomfortable in other ways is unsurpassed. Were it not that my stay is indefinite, and that I have already moved once, I would not remain here. As it is, I prefer putting up with it to the trouble and expense of changing; beside which, I have found that when once you have left your own home-circle, you have to bear, as a rule, with at least one intensely disagreeable person in every house.
My opinion of human nature has not risen since I came abroad, and I think that this winter has quite cured me of my natural tendency to skepticism.—I now realize too well what people's characters, both men and women, may become without religion either in themselves or in those about them. I suppose there is religion in Germany, but I have seen very little of it, either in Protestants or Catholics, and the results I consider simply dreadful! You see, there is no adequate motive to check the indulgence of any impulse—I have come to the conclusion that jealousy is the national vice of the Germans. Everybody is jealous of everybody else, no matter how absurdly or causelessly. Old women are jealous of young ones, and even sisters in the same family are jealous of each other to a degree that I couldn't have believed, had I not seen it.
———