From all the transitions and connection of the movements (which I am now most carefully working out in the Concerto), I pass at once without transition to the answering of your questions.
1. I think Bronsart's engagement for next year at four hundred thalers is advisable.
2. If Weissheimer has really made himself impossible, Damrosch should be the next one to be thought of, as a colleague of Bronsart. There is no hurry about this affair, and we will talk over it again viva voce.
3. The remaining four hundred thalers for X. I will send you at the end of this month. If you should require them sooner write me a couple of lines.
4. The question of leave of absence is not easy to decide, so long as no definite date is fixed for the concert. Frau Pohl, for instance, had had leave once already—but then the date of the concert was altered, and in consequence of her absence it was of no use. For the rest I don't doubt that Frau Pohl can get leave of absence once more—I only beg you to let me know definitely the day, so that I may inform Dingelstedt of it.
5. With regard to the co-operation of Messrs. v. Milde and Singer, it has its difficulties. They are both not without scruples in regard to the Euterpe, which, though they do not say so in so many words, might be summed up as follows: "If we co- operate in the Euterpe, we shut the golden doors of the Gewandhaus in our faces, and injure ourselves also in other towns, in which the rule of the Gewandhaus prevails. Ergo, it is more desirable, prudent(!), for us to act…" The rest you can add for yourself. Milde complains of the thanklessness of the part in the "Sangers Fluch," ["The Singer's Curse," by Schumann] the awful cold of the winter season, all the disagreeables in connection with obtaining leave, etc. Singer does not know what piece to choose, and also the E string of his violin is not quite safe, and more of that kind.
6. Fraulein Genast is in a still worse position, for she is not quite independent of the intimidation (on classical grounds) of her father, and is, moreover, engaged for the next Gewandhaus concert (for the part of the Rose in Schumann's "Rose's Pilgrimage"). None the less she said to me from the beginning that she was perfectly ready to do whatever I thought advisable. In view of this surmise I must naturally be all the more cautious. She sings on the 22nd in Zwickau, on the 24th (probably) at the Gewandhaus, and on the 31st in Aix-la-Chapelle. I have therefore advised her to come to an understanding with you herself personally in Leipzig on the 23rd, and to co-operate with you by preference as a singer of Lieder (with pianoforte accompaniment) at the soiree of the Euterpe on the 29th. Yesterday evening I marked the following three songs for her, as the most suitable for the purpose:—
A. "The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar" (composed for E. Genast lately by
Hiller, and still in manuscript).
B. A song of Rubinstein's: for instance, "Ah! could it remain so for ever!" (Tender allusion to the Gewandhaus!)
C. The three Zigeuner (by me).