This Remenyi was our own "Ol' Man Remenyi," who passed over only a year or so ago. I wonder if he was Ol' Man Remenyi then! He never really was an old man, and that appellation was more a mark of esteem than anything else—a sort of diminutive of good-will. I met Remenyi at Chautauqua, where he spent a month or more in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three. He gave me my first introduction to the music of Brahms, of whom he never tired of talking. He considered Brahms without a rival—the culminating flower of modern music; and if the Ol' Man slightly exaggerated his own influence in bringing Brahms out and presenting him to the world, I am not the one to charge it up against his memory.
In explaining Brahms and his music, Remenyi used to grow animated, and when words failed he would say, "Here, it was just like this"—and then he would seize his violin, the bow would wave through the air, and the notes would tell you how Brahms transposed Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" from A to B flat—a feat he never could have performed if Remenyi had not told him how. It was Remenyi who introduced Brahms to Joachim, and it was Joachim who introduced Brahms to Schumann, and it was Schumann's article, "New Paths," in the "Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik," that placed Brahms on a pedestal before the world. Brahms was not the great man that Schumann painted, Remenyi thought, but the idealization caused him to put forth a heroic effort to be what Clara and Robert considered him. So it was really these two who compelled him to push on: otherwise he might have relaxed into a mere concert performer or a leader of some subsidized band.
Remenyi always seemed to me like a choice antique mosaic, a trifle weather-worn, set into the present. He used to quote Liszt as if he lived around the corner, and would criticize Wagner, and tell of Moescheles, Haertel, the Mendelssohns and the Schumanns, as if they might all gather tomorrow and play for us at the Hall in the Grove.
Recently I met dear old Herr Kappes, eighty years young, who knew the Mendelssohns, and admired Brahms, loved Clara Schumann, and liked Remenyi—sometimes. They were too much alike, I fear, to like each other all the time. But the harmony is still in the heart of Herr Kappes. He gives music-lessons, and lectures, and will explain to you just how and where Brahms differs from Schumann, and where Schubert separates from both.
Herr Kappes can speak five languages, but even with them all he finds difficulty in making his meaning clear, and at times adopts the Remenyi plan, and will just turn to the piano and cry, "It's like this, see! Schumann wrote it in this way"—and then the strong hands will chase the keys down and back and over and up. "But Brahms took the motif and set it like this"—and Herr Kappes will strike the bass a thunderous stroke—pause, look at you, glide back and down, up and over, and you are carried away in a swirl of sweet sounds, and see a pink face framed in its beautiful aureole of white hair. You listen but you do not "see" the fine distinctions, because you do not care—Herr Kappes is all there is of it, so animated, so gentle, so true, so lovable—because he used to pay court to Fanny Mendelssohn and then transferred his affections to Clara Schumann, and now just loves his art, and everybody.
chumann's article, "New Paths," at once determined Brahms' career. He must either live up to the mark that had been set for him—or else run away.
I give below an extract from Robert's estimate of Brahms and his work:
Ten years have passed away, as many as I formerly devoted to the publication of this paper—since I have allowed myself to commit my opinions to this soil so rich in memories. Often in spite of an overstrained productive activity, I have felt moved to do so; many new and remarkable talents have made their appearance, and a fresh musical power seemed about to reveal itself among the many aspiring artists of the day, even if their compositions were only known to the few.