Music-Study in Germany: The Classic Memoir of the Romantic Era

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

349-350

text excerpt

In the afternoon, Oertling came for me to go and rehearse in the hall. Everything went beautifully, and I returned to the hotel in good spirits. By the time I was dressed for the concert, which was to begin at seven, Oertling appeared again, in evening costume, and presented me with a bouquet. We drove to the hall through a pouring rain. It was crowded, notwithstanding, for he had had the assurance to print that the concert was "to be brilliant through the performance of an American Virtuosin, named Miss Amy Fay. This young lady has studied with the greatest masters, and has had the most perfect success everywhere in her concert tours!" Did you ever!—You can imagine how I felt on reading it and seeing that I was expected to perform as if I had been on the stage all my life! Oertling had arranged the programme judiciously. Our sonata came first, so that I plunged right in and didn't have to wait and tremble! Then came two pieces by the orchestra; next, my three solos in a row, and a symphony of Haydn closed the programme. The sonata went off very smoothly. In my first solo I occasionally missed a note, but my second was without slip, and my third—Chopin's Study in Sixths—was encored, though I took the tempo too fast. However, the Frau Excellency von X. said she had frequently heard it from Henselt, but that I played it "just as well as he did." That's absurd, of course, though not bad considered as a compliment! They all said, "What a pity Henselt wasn't here!" I said to myself, "What a blessing Henselt wasn't!"—though I would give much to see him, as he is the greatest piano virtuoso in the world after Liszt.

excerpt from 'Music-Study in Germany: The Classic Memoir of the Romantic Era' pp. 349-350 (304 words)

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1425152772843