No small measure of the success of the performance was due to Mr. Stimpson, the unwearied chorus-master. At its conclusion Mendelssohn took him by both hands and said: "What can I give you in return for what you have done for my work?" The composer was delighted with the manner in which the band and chorus had rendered his music; and an old member of the band records "the eagerness with which Mendelssohn shook hands with all who could get near him in the artists' room, thanking them warmly for the performance." A veteran member of the choir, speaking from the recollections and experiences of more than fifty years, says of Mendelssohn's appearance and conducting: "It was one of the most impressive memories I have in matters musical."
Before going into the Hall, Mendelssohn said to Chorley, the musical critic of the Athenæum: "Now stick your claws into my book. Don't tell me what you like, but tell me what you don't like." After the performance, he said in his merriest manner to Chorley: "Come, and I will show you the prettiest walk in Birmingham." He then led the critic and other friends to the banks of the canal, bordered by coal and cinder heaps. There, on the towing-path between the bridges, they walked for more than an hour discussing the new oratorio. According to the late Mr. Moore, it was then and there, amidst the scenery of the cinder heaps, that a sudden thought struck Mendelssohn to change "Lift thine eyes" from a duet into a trio.
Shortly after this "prettiest walk in Birmingham," Mendelssohn poured out his delighted feelings to his brother Paul in the following letter:—
[To Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.]
"Birmingham, August 26 [? 27], 1846.
"My dear Brother,—From the very first you took so kind an interest in my 'Elijah,' and thus inspired me with so much energy and courage for its completion, that I must write to tell you all about its first performance yesterday. No work of mine ever went so admirably the first time of execution, or was received with such enthusiasm, by both the musicians and the audience, as this oratorio. It was quite evident, at the first rehearsal in London, that they liked it, and liked to sing and to play it; but I own I was far from anticipating that it would acquire such fresh vigour and 'go' in it at the performance. If you had only been there! During the whole two hours and a half that it lasted, the two thousand people in the large hall, and the large orchestra, were all so fully intent on the one object in question, that not the slightest sound was to be heard among the whole audience, so that I could sway at pleasure the enormous orchestra and choir, and also the organ accompaniment. How often I thought of you during the time! More especially, however, when the 'sound of abundance of rain' came, and when they sang the final chorus with furore, and when, after the close of the first part, we were obliged to repeat the whole movement ['Thanks be to God']. Not less than four choruses and four airs were encored, and not one single mistake occurred in the whole of the first part; there were some afterwards in the second part, but even these were but trifling. A young English tenor[49] sang the last air ['Then shall the righteous shine forth'] so beautifully, that I was obliged to collect all my energies so as not to be affected, and to continue beating time steadily. As I said, if you had only been there!"
In a letter written from London (August 31, 1846) to Frau Livia Frege, of Leipzig—a gifted amateur singer with a very lovely and high soprano voice—Mendelssohn said:—
"You have always shown so much kind interest in my 'Elijah,' that I look upon it as a duty to write to you after its performance, and to give you an account of it. If this should weary you, you have only yourself to blame; for why did you allow me to come to you with the score under my arm, and play to you those parts that were half completed, and why did you sing so much of it to me at sight? You really ought to have felt it a duty to travel with me to Birmingham; for one ought not to make people's mouths water and make them feel dissatisfied with their condition where one cannot help them; and it was just the solo soprano part I found there in a most helpless and lamentable state. But there was so much that was good by way of compensation that, on the whole, I bring back a very pleasant impression, and I often thought that you also would have taken pleasure in it.
"The rich, full sounds of the orchestra and the huge organ, combined with the powerful voices of the chorus, who sang with sincere enthusiasm; the wonderful resonance in the huge grand hall; an admirable English tenor; Staudigl, too, who took all possible pains, and whose talents and powers you already well know; some very good second soprano and contralto solo singers; all executing the music with special zest and the utmost fire and spirit, doing justice not only to the loudest passages, but also to the softest pianos in a manner which I never before heard from such masses; and, in addition, an impressionable, kindly, hushed, and enthusiastic audience—now still as mice, now exultant—all this is indeed sufficient good fortune for a first performance. In fact, I never in my life heard a better, or I may say one as good; and I almost doubt whether I shall ever again hear one equal to it, because there were so many favourable combinations on this occasion.
"With so much light the shadows were not absent, and the worst was the soprano part. It was all so pretty, so pleasing, so elegant, at the same time so flat, so heartless, so unintelligent, so soulless, that the music acquired a sort of amiable expression about which I could go mad even to-day when I think of it. The alto had not enough voice to fill the hall ... but her rendering was musical and intelligent, which to me makes it far more easy to put up with than want of voice. Nothing is so unpleasant to my taste as such cold, heartless coquetry in music. It is so unmusical in itself, and yet it is often made the basis of singing and playing—making music, in fact."