6. The “Cradle Song.” ([See page 69])
ever listened to, and that is speaking volumes. The man had great technical ability and good fingers; and yet his performance was hollow and lifeless, and his banging about made me feel miserable. Where in all the world has our Berlin good taste hidden itself? Then again, I have lately heard the “Zauberflöte,”—the best performance, I believe, to be met with nowadays. It is evident that each individual is doing his utmost, that they one and all love the music, and that the only thing wanting is an ensemble, which I fear will not be met with in Berlin, as long as sand is sand and the Spree a river. That made me rather melancholy last autumn; but now I look upon things more brightly, and think of the coming spring with its return of warmth and verdure,—that is the best opera one can see and hear. Au revoir, then, in the spring.
Ever yours,
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
The spring came, and brought Mendelssohn to London, where he arrived on the 25th of April, 1833. He at once set to work to compose, jointly with Moscheles, a grand Fantasia for two pianofortes and orchestra, which they could bring out as a novelty at the concert announced by the latter for the 1st of May. The theme selected was the “Gipsies’ March” from Weber’s “Preciosa;” each took his share in the composition of the Variations, and both combined to link them together. The manuscript score in the two handwritings, with its erasures and additions, its stitchings and patchings, seems to evoke the image of the collaborators, as they worked, thoroughly enjoying the incidents in this joint production.
Moscheles has a few words of graphic description in his diary: “I will make a variation in minor, which shall growl below in the bass,” exclaimed Felix; “will you do a brilliant one in major in the treble?” And so it was settled that the Introduction as well as the first and second Variations should fall to the lot of Mendelssohn; the third and fourth, with the connecting Tutti, to that of Moscheles. “We wished to share in the Finale; so he began with the Allegro movement, which I broke in upon with a ‘piu lento.’ On the night of the concert all went well; not a soul observed that the duet had been merely sketched, and that each of us was allowed to improvise in his own solo, until at certain passages agreed on, we met again in due harmony.”
In a letter bearing a later date, Moscheles says: “It is quite amusing to see how people want to find out by which of us this or that variation, this passage in the treble or that modulation in the bass, is written. It is just the intimate fusion of two musical minds that I like; and I tell them that an ice à la tutti frutti should not be analyzed otherwise than by dissolving it in one’s mouth, and that one should be satisfied with the flavor it leaves behind.”