An equally important group is that of the Russians, headed by the emotional and highly-strung Tschaïkowski, whom Bülow, not without justice, honoured with his special admiration. Tschaïkowski’s variations are one of the soundest and most genuine of modern piano works; and the B flat minor concerto has a swing and rush that carries us away. His Sonata, not only by its application of national themes, but specially by the national colouring of the episodic parts, down to the light and shade of the figurations, is unique among piano pieces. He was simpler and more popular in his numerous drawing-room pieces, which constantly reward study by a spirited phrase or unusual harmony. The school of older and younger Russians has worked on the same popular lines. To this school belong Borodin, Cui, Liadoff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Mussorgsky, Glazounow, Naprawnik. A third group is that of the Scandinavians, who gained importance in Europe about the middle of the century, not merely in fiction and painting, but in music also. But they were rather inspired than inspirers. Their leader is Grieg, whose well-known concerto Op. 16, in spite of certain eccentricities, has a very flowing course suggesting the united influence of many predecessors. His themes are good specimens of a music which is not the product of experience, but of invention. Scores of variations and dainty isolated pieces keep the same happy and attractive medium between the shallow and the interesting. They are in any case more important than Gade’s Mendelssohniana. For a long time less known, but far deeper and more genuine than Grieg, is Halfdan Kjerulf, whose works have been republished by Arno Kleffel (Simon). Humorous little pieces in the post-romantic style, but of concentrative ability, deserve the highest praise a Romantic can receive; they are like Schubert in spirit. Among the later Scandinavians, Schytte and Sinding have tried no new paths; Stenhammer, also of importance as a virtuoso, has given us works of pith and character, which may rank among the first.
In England and America, in later times, Graham Moore and Macdowell may claim notice as lesser Romantics. The former is not free from triviality; the latter invents with more delicate genius, and has written a very respectable piano-concerto. But Germany may still boast that she retains the supremacy.
From the group of German post-Romantics, which found in Franz Brendel a very fertile composer of programme tone-pictures, two great personalities drew apart. Adolf Jensen was the inheritor of Schumann’s emotion, Johannes Brahms of Schumann’s musical character. Jensen, whose character is the mean between Chopin and Schumann, has left behind him music which will not die, in his clear-cut and splendidly worked-out Suites, in his emotional “Wanderbilder” and Idylls, in the unique Eroticon, which characterises the different forms of love in separate movements, and in the four-handed wedding music, which is lovely and full of power. But Brahms inherited from his patron Schumann, not youth, not this simple thinking and inventing, but manhood, in which music became an absolute self-supported world. He worked in the world of tone, with no trace of virtuosity, with not a suspicion of a concession to the understanding of the mere amateur. His Sonatas and Concertos, the sparkling Scherzo Op. 4, the Variations, the Études, even the four-handed waltzes and the unique “Liebes-lieder” waltzes—for four hands with voices—there has, in our time, been no music written so free from the slightest condescension. Stubborn, at times repellent, even in her smiles not very gracious, this music seeks to make no proselytes; but whomsoever she wins as a friend, she holds fast and allows that rarest of pleasures—the pursuit of lofty aims, and the quiet rapture of a student.
Johannes Brahms.
Photograph from life by Marie Fellinger, Vienna.
