The fourth concert on the 30th April nearly led to a rupture between Wagner and the directors. The programme was as follows:—
| Symphony in B flat | Lucas. |
| Romanza (“Huguenots”) | Meyerbeer. |
| Nonetto for string and wind instruments | Spohr. |
| Recitative and Aria | Beethoven. |
| Overture (“Ruler of the Spirits”) | Weber. |
| Symphony No. 7 | Beethoven. |
| Duetto (“cosi fan Tutti”) | Mozart. |
| Overture (“l’Alcade de la Velga”) | Onslow. |
Wagner had a decided objection to long programmes. The London public, he said, “overfeed themselves with music; they cannot healthily digest the lengthy menu provided for them.” This programme was distasteful, and what a scene did it produce! During the aria from “Les Huguenots,” the tenor, Herr Reichardt, after a few bars’ rest, did not retake his part at the proper moment, upon which Wagner turned to him,—of course without stopping the band,—whereupon the singer made gestures to the audience indicating that the error lay with Wagner. At the end of the vocal piece a slight consternation ensued. Wagner was well aware of the unfriendliness of a section of the critics, and in all probability capital would be made out of this. At the end of the first part of the concert I went to him in the artists’ room. His high-pitched excitement and uncontrolled utterances, it was easy to foresee, boded no good. And so when we reached home after the concert there ensued a positive storm of passion. Wagner at his best was impulsive and vehement; suffering from a miserable insinuation as to his incapacity, he grew furious. On one point he was emphatic,—he would return to Switzerland the next day. All entreaties and protestations were unavailing. Sainton, Lüders, and myself actually hung upon him, so ungovernable was his anger. He knew how I had suffered in the press for championing his cause. “Chef-de-claque,” “madman,” and “tutto quanti” were the elegant epithets bestowed upon me in print; and if Wagner left now, the enemy would have some show of truth in charging him with admitted incompetence: however, after two or three hours’ talking he engaged to stay and see whether he could not win success with the “Tannhäuser” overture, which was to be performed at the next concert.
A distorted report of this event appearing in certain German musical papers, he wrote an explanatory letter to Dresden, in which he stated, “I need not tell you that it was only the entreaties of Ferdinand Praeger and those friends who accompanied me home, that dissuaded me from my somewhat impulsive determination.”
At the fifth concert, 14th May, the “Tannhäuser” overture was performed. It came at the end of the first part of another of those long programmes which Wagner disliked so much. In a letter to me to Brighton, where I had gone for a few days, he writes: “These endless programmes, with these interminable masses of instrumental and vocal pieces, torture me.” The programme of the fifth concert was:—
THE “TANNHÄUSER” OVERTURE.
| Symphony | Mozart. |
| Aria | Paer. |
| Concerto (pianoforte) | Chopin. |
| Aria | Mozart. |
| Overture (“Tannhäuser”) | Wagner. |
| Symphony (“Pastorale”) | Beethoven. |
| Romance | Meyerbeer. |
| Barcarola (vocal) | Ricci. |
| Overture (“Preciosa”) | Weber. |
How those violin passages on the fourth string in the “Tannhäuser” overture worried the instrumentalists! But as Lipinski had done at Dresden, so Sainton did now in London, and fingered the passages for each individual performer. The concert room was well filled. At the close of the overture tumultuous applause followed, the audience rising and waving handkerchiefs; indeed, Mr. Anderson informed me that he had never known such a display of excitement at a Philharmonic concert where everything was so staid and decorous. As this overture has become perhaps one of the most popular of Wagner excerpts, it will be interesting to read what the two acknowledged leading musical critics in London, i.e. of the “Musical World” (who was also the critic of the “Times”) and the “Athenæum,” said with reference to it. The former wrote: “The instrumentation is always heavy and thick”; and the “Athenæum” said: “Yawning chromatic progressions ... a scramble; ... a hackneyed eight-bar phrase, the commonplace of which is not disguised by an accidental sharp; ... the instrumentation is ill-balanced, ineffective, thin, and noisy.”
On the morning of the 22d May, Wagner came to Milton Street very early. It was his birthday; he was forty-two, and the good, devoted Minna had so carefully timed the arrival of her congratulatory letter, that Wagner had received it that morning. He was informed that her gift was a dressing-gown of violet velvet, lined with satin of similar colour, headgear—the biretta, so well known—to match,—articles of apparel which furnished his enemies with so much opportunity for charges of ostentation, egregious vanity, etc. Minna knew her husband well; the gift was entirely after his heart. He read us the letter. The only portion of it which I can remember referred to the animal world,—the dog, Peps, who had been presented with a new collar; and of his parrot, who had repeated unceasingly, “Richard Wagner, du bist ein grosser mann” (Richard Wagner, you are a great man). Wagner’s imitation of the parrot was very amusing. That day the banquet was spread for Richard Wagner. How he did talk! It was the never-ending fountain leaping from the rock, sparkling and bright, clear and refreshing. He told us episodes of his early career at Magdeburg and Riga. How he impressed me then with his energy! Truly, he was a man whose onward progress no obstacles could arrest. The indomitable will, and the excision of “impossible” from his vocabulary, were prominent during the recital of the stirring events of his early manhood. Certainly it was but a birthday feast, and the talk was genial and merry; yet there went out from me, unbidden and unchecked, “Truly, that is a great man.” Yes, though it was but after-dinner conversation, the reflections were those of a man born to occupy a high position in the world of thought and to compel the submission of others to his intellectual vigour.
“THE PHILHARMONIC OMNIBUS.”