It was remarkable in the Gewandhaus yesterday that, after the stormy overtures to the 'Fliegende Holländer,' not a single hand was raised to applaud, not even a single hiss heard. There is a great deal of 'Geist' in the music, but it is of the scorching kind, and to me such masses of instrumentation and such a piling up of diminished sevenths and discords of all kinds, are distracting and joyless. Gluck, no doubt, has his musical demons, and Mozart his hell in 'Don Juan,' but they do not give one a headache; and yet the papers will maintain that, just as Beethoven's latest works were not immediately understood, so it will take time to become familiar with Wagner. << less