most monstrous of all his doings—starting the most poetical and introspective of Schumann's overtures—that to Manfred—with a cymbal clash like that which sets Mazeppa's horse on his wild gallop in Liszt's symphonic poem. And who can ever forget the treatment of the kettledrums which he demanded of his players?"
Mr. Krehbiel presents a highly flattering portrait of the lay members of the Philharmonic Society. I doubt if meddling with the classics, even when it is radical, causes these ladies and gentlemen as keen suffering as he imagines. At any rate, this procedure did not begin with Mahler, nor did it end with him, and I would like to wager that I could introduce salient modifications in such frequently performed and popular works as the overture to Oberon, Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, and Mozart's Jupiter without their being detected by more than seven or eight persons in an average Philharmonic audience (and this is putting the percentage considerably higher than seems justifiable), an audience which might include the lynx-eared dean himself who once, even with a program before him, levelled a half-column of abuse at a man named Prokofieff for having composed a piece which the aforesaid program plainly attributed to Vasilenko.[1]
- ↑ The curious reader may find a complete account of this contretemps in the Musical Courier for December 19, 1918.
