I watched him go. Smiling a little, ingratiatingly, he bowed to Richter, and then bent slightly over the table at which the famous musician was dining alone. Richter took not the slightest notice. My friend, embarrassed, waited a minute or so, and I saw him speaking. But the diner continued dining. Again my friend spoke, and at [231] ]length Richter looked up and barked three times. Hastily the pianist retreated, and when he had rejoined me I noticed that he was a little pale and breathless.
“The old pig!” he exclaimed.
“Why, what happened?”
“Didn’t you see? First of all, he wouldn’t take the slightest notice of me or even acknowledge my existence. I spoke to him in English three times before he would answer, and then, like the mannerless brute he is, he replied in German.”
“What did he say?”
“How do I know? I don’t speak his rotten language. But it sounded like: ‘Zuzu westeben hab! Zuzu westeben hab! Zuzu westeben hab!’ I only know that he was very angry. He was eating slabs of liver sausage. And he spoke right down in his chest.”
He was, indeed, unapproachable.
Of course, he was a marvellous conductor, a conductor of genius; but long before he left Manchester his powers had begun to fail.
For two or three years I made a practice of attending his rehearsals. Nothing will persuade me that in the whole world there is a more depressing spot than the Manchester Free Trade Hall on a winter’s morning. I used to sit shivering with my overcoat collar buttoned up. Richter always wore a round black-silk cap, which made him look like a Greek priest. He would walk ponderously to the conductor’s desk, seize his baton, rattle it against the desk, and begin without a moment’s loss of time. Perhaps it was an innocent work like Weber’s Der Freischütz Overture. This would proceed swimmingly enough for a minute or so, when suddenly one would hear a bark and the music would stop. One could not say that Richter spoke or shouted: he merely made a disagreeable noise. Then, in English most broken, in English utterly smashed, he would correct the mistake [232] ]that had been made, and recommence conducting without loss of a second.
He had no “secret.” Great conductors never do have “secrets.” Only charlatans “mesmerise” their orchestras. Simply, he knew his job, he was a great economiser of time, and he was a stern disciplinarian.