The whole work is to me a delight on account of its real musicianship—a work evolved from a highly sensitive, very intelligent brain, that has absorbed and assimilated much, without imitating anybody or anything.
These are my first sincere impressions of your work, to which I will add my sentiments. While the musician listened during the hours of the performance, the friend in him was carefully kept apart. When, however, the musician’s heart began beating more and more warmly, the friend and the musician became again at one in their joy.
Here also arises the reflection: Where did you or where does anybody acquire mastery? Do the gifted themselves really know what they are doing and is Maeterlinck right when he makes Mélisande say “Je ne sais pas ce que je sais”?
_A priori_ I shall always say: There must be Opera in English—but at present there cannot be, as nobody knows how to sing in it. The performance however was admirable. Amato was superb and so was the orchestra, chorus and old Herty! Hats off to him too!
Kindest regards to Mrs. Damrosch in which Elise joins me.
Believe me, dear Walter, as ever and more proudly than ever,
In 1891 I was asked to give a concert for the Orthopædic Hospital in which my friend, Mrs. John Hobart Warren, was always much interested, and in casting about for some sensational feature which would draw the public I conceived the idea of having Eugene Ysaye and Fritz Kreisler play the Bach concerto for two violins. Ysaye was then at the very zenith of his career and Kreisler had just come to America as a young violinist of great attainments and charm, and still greater promise for the future. The performance of the Bach concerto proved all that I had hoped, and after the concert Ysaye had supper with me at the old Delmonico’s in Madison Square. Ysaye is not only a remarkable artist but one of the most brilliant conversationalists I have met, and during the supper he proceeded in the most fascinating way to analyze himself and Kreisler. He said: “I have arrived at the top and from now on there will be a steady decrease of my powers. I have lived my life to the full and burned the candle at both ends. For some time I shall make up in subtlety of phrasing and nuance what my technic as a violinist can no longer give, but Kreisler is on the ascendant and in a short time he will be the greater artist.” It is not for me to say whether Ysaye’s prophecy has come true, but no one who has heard him in his prime can forget his truly gigantic conception of the Beethoven concerto, for instance, and the mastery with which he poured out the golden flood of his music.