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Musical Courier 1895-06-26: Vol 30 Iss 799, 1895
53 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE LXXII. NETHERRHENISH MUSIC FESTIVAL.
3Cologne, June 5, 1895.
5"PINGSTEN, das liebliche Fest, war gekommen"; thus Goethe begins his great epic, "Reinecke Fuchs." Whitsuntide is really the most lovely festival, and the beauty of nature in its freshly reawakened glory lends it a particular charm of its own. Americans have adopted from the Germans the evergreen, poetic and suggestive Christmas tree, why do they not also follow in the celebration of Whitsuntide? one of two readings
6"Pfingsten, das liebliche Fest, war gekommen"; thus Goethe begins his great epic, "Reinecke Fuchs." Whitsuntide is really the most lovely festival, and the beauty of nature in its freshly reawakened glory lends it a particular charm of its own. Americans have adopted from the Germans the evergreen, poetic and suggestive Christmas tree, why do they not also follow in the celebration of Whitsuntide? one of two readings
8In no part of Germany is this spring festival more extensively and at the same time also more worthily celebrated than on the Rhine, the most beautiful province of Germany, "the Lord's parlor," as it was once christened by a Jewish woman from the Rhineland.
10In no other part of the fatherland also does music hold a higher place than here, and it is but a natural outcome of this condition of things that the highest reproductive emanations of the loveliest art should be joined to the celebration of the loveliest festival. Hence the establishment of the Netherrhennish Music Festivals, which though they may have lost some of their original great importance on account of the vastly increased number and high standard of general concerts all over the country, have lost little or nothing in their popularity and hold a favorite place in the hearts of music lovers not only of the Rhenish province but also of the rest of Germany, of Belgium, Holland, Eastern France and even as far as England. The tongues of all these nations could be heard promiscuously at the three days' festival, which closed with a grand festival banquet last night; and the number of musically important personages whom I chanced to meet at this festival was commensurate with the importance of the occasion. I mention at random, just as they come to my mind now, Max Schillings and Engelbert Humperdinck, the two young German composers; Frank Van der Stucken, from New York, soon Cincinnati; Concert director Hermann Wolff, from Berlin; Frau Professor Schmidt-Koehne, the Berlin vocalist; Dr. Heinrich Reimann, the Berlin organist; Otto Lessmann, editor of the Allgemeine Musikzeitung; Otto Hegner, the former wonder child pianist, now a good looking young fellow of about seventeen, who will soon be heard again in concerts; Ernst Otto Nodnagel, from Berlin, composer, critic and vocalist; Music directors Schwickerath, from Aix-la-Chapelle; Buths, from Düsseldorf, and Kogel, from Frankfort-on-the-Main; Arno Kleffel, composer-conductor; Otto Weitzel, critic, pedagogue and pianist; J. Grégoire, Kunstbummler, from Würzburg, and a true Maecenas; Johanna Hoefken, the excellent contralto; Alexander Roman, the young Russian violinist; the entire Ibach family, from Barmen; Director Julius Hofmann, from Cologne; Goepfart, music director, from Reinscheid; Ida Junkers, the Düsseldorf singer; Shedlock, the editor of the London Musical Times; Théodor Radox, the Liège conservatory director; Edwin Bechstein, of the celebrated Berlin piano manufacturing firm, and a young fellow named Bernhard Hammersbach, who is engaged as piano teacher for the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. I heard him play at the house of his teacher, Dr. Otto Neitzel, where he performed for Mr. Van der Stucken and myself the Rubinstein D major suite and the second ballade (B minor) by Liszt, and to judge from his playing he will prove a valuable acquisition to Cincinnati.
12However, not of persons but of the festival I want to speak, and I shall begin by summing up my impression of the entire seventy-second Netherrhennish music festival as a whole into the one sentence, that in point of reproduction, especially as far as orchestra and chorus are concerned, it was one of the best, if not the absolutely best, music festival I ever attended. As far as the program was concerned, however, I consider it disappointing and not up to the high standard wanted on and demanded for such an occasion. Laid out on the not very liberal lines of a strictly German scheme, the program as a whole had the fault in the first place of not bringing a sufficient number of important novelties, and again of such grand standard works which, either through their very festive character or through the grand means they demand for reproduction, are especially fit objects for performance at such music festivals. Moreover, it was by no means a happy idea of the compilers of the three festival programs that they tried to make up in quantity for what was lacking in quality. The consequence of such lengthy programs—two of which each consumed four and the third one four hours and a half for performance (including a pause of thirty minutes)—was that long before the last number the attention was bound to flag, even in the most attentive and ardent of listeners and music lovers, not to speak of the executants themselves.
14Added to this was the heat of the Guerzenich Hall at this time of the year and crowded to its utmost with a sweltering mass of humanity. The Cologne Music Hall is one of the oldest and certainly the most beautiful, finely acoustic and splendidly decorated concert halls of the entire world, but it is also one of the worst ventilated, and therefore the heat toward the close of these lengthy concerts became almost unbearable. In general character, therefore, this last festival was more a series of three lengthy subscription concerts given at the expiration of a regular musical season with more material and better forces than usual, than it was a real big music festival, and this is the principal objection I have to make against it.
16But now, after having freed my mind with the candid mentioning of these not inconsiderable drawbacks, let me proceed to give you a short sketch of the excellent performances that took place under the sole direction of the Cologne music director, Prof. Dr. Franz Wüllner.
18The custom prevailing in former times, of having besides the music director of the Netherrhennish city in which the music festival happened to take place, an extra festival conductor of renown as a composer or also as a conductor, only seems to have been dropped of late years. It is true at Aix-la-Chapelle last year we still had Schuch, who worked together with Schwickerath, but at Düsseldorf the year before Buths conducted alone, and so did Wüllner at Cologne this year. I don't know whether I shall regret this or not. The result at Aix-la-Chapelle was certainly not so harmonious a one as that achieved here during the last three days. Moreover, composer conductors of importance, such as have in former years officiated as festival conductors, and among the number of which were Lindpaintner, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Hiller, Lachner and others, are getting rarer and rarer from year to year. Still there are a few like Brahms and Richard Strauss left, and they might possibly have been asked to conduct their own works on the program and to grace the festival with their presence.
20Also are there left in Germany a few other great conductors who, if the festival conductor is not exactly a believer in the first commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods but me," might well be made use of on such occasions. I need only to mention the names of Nikisch, Weingartner, Klughardt and Muck to select from. Still there is something in the objection to using a foreign conductor who has not studied the works to be performed with the chorus or the home orchestra, and whose rehearsal with the increased festival orchestra must of necessity be short.
22The result which Professor Dr. Wüllner achieved as sole festival conductor, with his large forces, speaks most forcibly for the correctness of his idea in monotheism at the head of music festivals. Certainly, as I said before, I have at no Netherrhennish music festival during all my experience of many years' duration heard better or more finished orchestral performances than I did on this occasion.
24The first concert on Whit Sunday opened with a Händel overture in D major, which I have frequently heard under Theodore Thomas. If I mistake not it was originally a movement from a concerto grosso, but was reorchestrated and used by the master for some special occasion. It consists of an introduction and a fugue, the former of a festive and the latter of a lively, fresh and buoyant character.
26The overture was followed by what was to me the only novelty on the entire festival program, viz., a Te Deum, also in D major, composed by the festival conductor, Professor Wüllner. It is not a new work, and has been heard at Cologne and some other cities before, but I did not know it. The characteristics of the four short portions of the Te Deum are great earnestness and unbinding severity of style, coupled with the richest kind of musical workmanship, which culminates in two fugues of extraordinary contrapuntal skill and of better than the usual somewhat dry effect. As for inspiration I liked best in it the second portion, Te gloriosus Apostolorum chorus in G minor, in which three part female and three part male chorus are at first introduced antiphonally. The Te ergo quaesimus in B flat likewise contains some fine beauties, more especially in recherché harmonies. Wüllner is and remains an excellent musician, as well as one of the foremost of the world's musical disciplinarians and musical pedagogues, and the result is discernible not only in the most admirable reproductions under his baton, but also in his musical creations.
28The chief work of the first day was Haydn's oratorio The Seasons. Of course it would be as useless as carrying water into the Rhine to write aught about this ever youthful and fresh creation, the last one, except a couple of string quartets, of the father of the modern orchestra. The performance showed the large festival chorus of some 550 voices to the very best advantage; in fact I never before heard more correct singing and better general ensemble in so large a body of amateurs. The vintage and dancing choruses especially went admirably well.
30Of the soloists Marcella Sembrich as Hannchen created the liveliest interest, and perhaps here and there a bit of disappointment. The great cantatrice, who for this single appearance commanded the price of 3,000 marks, which in Germany is considered rather exorbitant, seemed somewhat less well disposed than when I last heard her in Berlin. Moreover, in spite of her great art, the opera is more in her line than oratorio singing, and thus though Sembrich had splendid moments, especially in the two last sections of the oratorio, and was vociferously applauded whenever opportunity arose, she was, as I said before, a bit of a disappointment to the dearly paying Cologners.
32Her great solo in the "summer" season, one of the most characteristic places in the oratorio, was spoiled by the loud tolling of the vesper bells in St. Alban's Church, close by the Guerzenich. Though in strictly Roman Catholic Cologne this sort of thing could, of course, not be entirely avoided, the sexton might have been a little less noisy in the neighborhood of the concert hall, and I can assure you that he was not extolled by the public for his excessive tolling, which told so excessively against the fair singer and the enjoyment of the listeners.
34Anton Sistermans, of Frankfort, was the representative of the part of Simon, and his smooth singing and oleaginous voice were well suited to the music allotted to him.
36Birrenkoven, the Hamburg operatic tenor (a native of Cologne), was to have sung the part of Lucas, but the singing of heroic tenor parts has unfitted him for oratorio work, and R. Kaufmann, from Basel, was substituted in Birrenkoven's stead. Mr. Kaufmann has been heard as Night Watchman in Die Meistersinger during one of the last seasons of opera in German at the Metropolitan Opera House, and all I can say about him now is that he still sings like a Nachtwächter.
38***
40The second day's program was in point of variety and general interest an improvement upon its predecessor. It opened with Bach's grand cantata We Thank Thee, Oh Lord (the opening words of the Seventy-fifth Psalm), and which as the program book says was written in 1731 for the commemoration of some political event at Leipzig. Bach himself thought so much of this cantata that he had it performed repeatedly (in 1739 and 1749), and that he made use of the principal chorus from this cantata twice in the High Mass in B minor. To me the most beautiful portion of the work is the overture, which is in D major, and is an orchestration of the prelude from the E major suite for violin alone. In this orchestral garb it sounds superb, with the one exception that the high trumpet in D is far too glaring in color, and, as it is technically so hard to play, not infrequently miscarried and spoiled the effect of the whole.
42Extra trumpets had been made for this festival at Munich, but they seemed no better than others which I have heard in New York and elsewhere. Moreover, the only trumpet player I ever heard play softly, musically and with an almost certain technic is Koslek, of Berlin. Händel has been reorchestrated. I wonder why someone has not the moral courage to perform the same necessary service in a spirit of piety for that greater giant Johann Sebastian Bach. In this case it would suffice that the trumpet parts were laid one octave lower. Who will have the courage first to introduce it in that way?
44The cantata, besides this orchestral introduction and the aforementioned chorus, consists of a recitative for bass, a very lovely aria in B minor for soprano, a recitative for alto and then the usual closing choral. Sistermans sang the bass recitative; Miss Charlotte Huhn, whom you may remember as a fair contralto from the Metropolitan Opera House, was the alto singer. She has now a hollow and somewhat wooden voice, and not infrequently she indulges in the terrible habit of flattening on her notes. Miss Huhn leaves the Cologne Opera House, where she had been engaged for several seasons, with the expiration of the present one, and the citizens seem to be unhappy over it. I must say, however, with Wilheim Busch: Der Jüngling sieht den Grund nicht ein.
46New to me was the soprano Miss Johanna Nathan, from Frankfort, who has been coming to the front rapidly during the last season or two. As a concert singer she is evidently quite young yet, but I venture to predict a great future for her. Her voice is not a large one, but it is of extremely musical and sympathetic quality, and she sings as purely as an angel.
48Mozart's E flat symphony followed upon Bach and was admirably and most exquisitely performed by the large orchestra of 145 pieces. So persistent was the applause after the well-known and popular menuet that Professor Wüllner had to grant a repetition of the movement. I was a bit astonished to find that Wüllner indulged in the quite modern habit and mistake of several other conductors I know, of taking the first movement of the symphony rather too slowly, and, against this, unduly hastening the slow movement.
50Faust's Verklärung, the third part of Robert Schumann's scenes from Goethe's Faust, was also on the third part of the program. It is certainly among the most inspired and most beautiful of the great romanticist's creations. A possible objection to the performance of a fragment could easily be met and refuted by the citing of the fact that Faust's Verklärung was originally planned by Schumann as a complete work in itself (1844), and that the incoherent scenes from the first part of Faust, as well as the overture (which was written still later), were afterthoughts.
52The performance of this, in itself complete torso, was the noblest grand total reproduction for soli, chorus and orchestra which was offered at this festival. Besides the soloists I mentioned before, Karl Perron, the Dresden baritone, who is an immense and justified favorite, participated, and although in the musical utterances of Pater Seraphicus he was a bit stilted and full of mannerisms, he sang Doctor Marianus' transcendental music and verses so beautifully
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