Bülow was at that time considered the foremost conductor of Germany. He had taken a little mediocre orchestra of fifty, belonging to the Grand Duke of Meiningen, and through his supreme genius had galvanized it into a marvellous instrument. Under his guidance this little orchestra had created a sensation all over Germany and Austria and a special tour de force was their playing of certain symphonies entirely by heart without any music before them.
When I arrived in Frankfort I found that Bülow was living at the Schwan Hotel, and with much trepidation I told him what I wanted of him. He seemed very much touched and claimed that it was the first time in his experience that a musician who, as he put it, “was already prominent in opera, symphony, and oratorio” thought he could learn anything from him. In the warmest, I may say most affectionate terms, he promised me every possible help and advised me to take rooms in the same hotel. This I did, and I can truthfully say that the entire summer during which I was with him in closest companionship, not only in his rooms and during the lesson hours for the pianists, many of which I also attended, but on long walks to the museums, the parks, and the suburbs of Frankfort, his almost paternal kindliness, his wisdom, and his comments on things artistic, literary, political, and personal were a revelation to me. So many stories were current about his biting comments and brusque behavior toward people who excited his enmity, that I was amazed to find him throughout so companionable and so gentle in all his relations toward me. He had a heart most tender and sensitive, but life had dealt this idealist so many hard knocks that he incased his heart in a shell with which to protect it from further onslaughts.
He went through all Beethoven’s nine symphonies with me, bar by bar, phrase by phrase, and I still have the scores in which he made certain notations of phrasing or illustrated changes in dynamics of certain instruments in order to bring out the undoubted intentions of Beethoven more clearly. He virtually analyzed the symphonies for me in the same way as in his edition of the piano sonatas, and at the close of our three months together he gave me a copy of his own score of the Ninth Symphony with all his own annotations, many of which were based on the analysis made by Wagner during his historic performance of that work at the corner-stone laying of the Bayreuth Fest-Spielhaus.
During these three months of intensive study I received so much from him that was new to me, such a wealth of ideas regarding interpretation and the technic of the conductor’s art, that it took me years to digest it properly and to learn how, instead of merely copying slavishly, I could make it my own and accept or reject parts of it, according to the methods of analysis taught me by him.
During our stay in Frankfort a little Prince of Hesse, whose mother, the Landgravine, was a “Royal Highness,” being a niece of the old Emperor William, invited von Bülow to give a Brahms recital at his palace. Bülow immediately insisted that I, too, must be invited, which accordingly I was. When I accompanied him he introduced me to the various exalted personages assembled, and the Landgravine asked me if I were not “the son of the great Doctor Damrosch.” I politely answered: “Yes, your Royal Highness.”
“Was he not a friend of Rubinstein?” she continued.
“Yes.”
“He played the viola, did he not?”
I said: “No, your Royal Highness, the violin.”
“No,” she said, “the viola.”