While Leschetizky was staying in London Mr. Kuhe gave one of these lengthy concerts at Brighton, and the former went down to hear it. But when he arrived he was tired after the journey and in the mood for a quiet evening; the armchair was comfortable; it began to rain—he did not go. Next morning he was walking about the parade enjoying the sunshine and the sea air, quite happy and entirely oblivious of the concert for the moment, when up came Mr. Kuhe, weary and reproachful: "Why did you not come to my concert last night?" Leschetizky stared at him, apparently horror-struck, "The concert! Good heavens," he exclaimed, "you don't mean to say it is over already!"
Leschetizky came to London two or three times afterwards, but never stayed very long. The atmosphere of solidity, musical and climatic, depressed him, and he was always glad to get away again to lands where the sky was blue and the sun shone.
Among those who had worked with him in St. Petersburg was Annette Essipoff. She came to him when she was twelve years old, and he grew to be prouder of her than almost any other pupil. "I would have given my life, could it have brought her nearer the goal," he says. "She had a talent that is met with once in a lifetime—oh, if you could but have heard how she played to me sometimes." Later his pride grew into love, and she became his second wife.
In 1878, partly on account of her health and his own—weakened by an attack of typhoid fever—and partly for the sake of his father, who had been living alone for many years, Leschetizky made up his mind to leave Russia and settle permanently in Vienna. During the twenty-six years that had elapsed since it had been his home, great changes had taken place there.
LESCHETIZKY IN 1903
Vienna had always had a reputation as a musical city. Yet in 1838 Schumann, though finding it delightfully gay and the opera "splendid, surpassing any other," added in his letters home, "... in vain do I look for musicians, that is musicians who can play passably well on one or two instruments, and who are cultivated men." With the people themselves he is pleased enough: "Of all Germans," he writes, "they spare their hands the least, and even in their idolatry have been known to split their gloves with clapping so much." Incidentally it is curious to compare with this Mendelssohn's description of a Berlin audience a few years earlier: "When a piece of music comes to an end, the whole company sit in solemn silence, each considering what his opinion is to be, nobody giving a sign of applause or pleasure, and all the while the performer in the most painful embarrassment not knowing whether, nor in what spirit, he has been listened to." Enthusiastic as Vienna evidently was by nature, her enthusiasm did not carry her to the same level as other German cities, where music was an every-day occurrence, for she was as much behind Leipzig, for instance, as she was in advance of Russia.
At the time of Leschetizky's birth—1830—Vienna had just lost two of her greatest composers, Beethoven and Schubert, and for the moment no one remained to carry on her tradition as the home of great musicians. Schumann and Mendelssohn, it is true, came to and fro. Spohr had been there—Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Hummel, Meyerbeer, Cherubini, and a host of other executant-composers, including Liszt and Chopin. But no great composer was actually living there—nor was to live there for many years to come. Her creative spirit seemed to have gone to sleep and left her rich only in virtuosi. In 1878, when Leschetizky returned from Russia, it was to find her once more restored to her former glory. Brahms had come. Goldmark, Brückner, Brüll, Volkmann, Johann Strauss were there. For thirty years she had been but a city of players. She was again a city of composers.