Altogether I had every reason to be satisfied with my first experience at one of those big music festivals, which augured well for the future, and it was a happy summer I spent that year, partly with my people and friends in the Thuringian woods, partly in the Austrian alps, with the Joachims, who, in the happy temporary possession of a charming little villa in Alt-Aussee in Styria, had suggested to me the taking of rooms somewhere near them, so that we could make excursions together, and now and then some music as well. I do not know which I enjoyed more : a day's wanderings with the great musician, often starting at five o'clock in the morning-- he was an excellent walker roaming on the tops of the hills surrounding the picturesque village-- or accompanying on the piano, his playing of his own Hungarian Concerto and those of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Spohr, and sonatas by Locatelli, Tartini, Handel he practised every day for some time or singing with Frau Joachim songs and duets for hours at a time.