The author of the charming fairy tales, which are still admired by young
as well as old people, in his usual graceful style, gives a description
of a Liszt concert in 1840:
"In Hamburg, at the City of London Hotel, Liszt gave a concert. In a few
minutes the hall was crowded. I came too late, but I got the best
place--close upon the orchestra, where the piano stood--for I was
brought up by a back staircase. Liszt is one of the kings in the realm
of music. My guide brought me to him, as I have said, up a back stair,
and I am not ashamed to acknowledge this. The hall--even the side
rooms--beamed with lights, gold chains and diamonds. Near me, on a sofa,
reclined a young Jewess, stout and overdressed. She looked like a walrus
with a fan. Grave Hamburg merchants stood crowded together, as if they
had important business 'on 'Change' to transact. A smile rested on their
lips, as though they had just sold 'paper' and won enormously. The
Orpheus of mythology could move stones and trees by his playing. The new
Liszt-Orpheus had actually electrified them before he played. Celebrity,
with its mighty prestige, had opened the eyes and ears of the people. It
seemed as if they recognised and felt already what was to follow. I
myself felt in the beaming of those many flashing eyes, and that
expectant throbbing of the heart, the approach of the great genius who
with bold hands had fixed the limits of his art in our time. London,
that great capital of machinery, or Hamburg, the trade emporium of
Europe, is where one should hear Liszt for the first time; there time
and place harmonise; and in Hamburg I was to hear him. An electric shock
seemed to thrill the hall as Liszt entered. Most of the ladies rose. A
sunbeam flashed across each face, as though every eye were seeing a
dear, beloved friend. I stood quite close to the artist. He is a slight
young man. Long, dark hair surrounded the pale face. He bowed and seated
himself at the instrument. Liszt's whole appearance and his mobility
immediately indicate one of those personalities toward which one is
attracted solely by their individuality. As he sat at the piano the
first impression of his individuality and the trace of strong passions
upon his pale countenance made me imagine that he might be a demon
banished into the instrument from which the tones streamed forth. They
came from his blood; from his thoughts; he was a demon who had to free
his soul by playing; he was under the torture; his blood flowed, and his
nerves quivered. But as he played the demonia disappeared. I saw
the pale countenance assume a nobler, more beautiful expression.
The divine soul flashed from his eyes, from every feature; he grew
handsome--handsome as life and inspiration can make one. His Valse
Infernale is more than a daguerreotype from Meyerbeer's Robert. We do
not stand before and gaze upon the well-known picture. No, we transport
ourselves into the midst of it. We gaze deep into the very abyss, and
discover new, whirling forms. It did not seem to be the strings of a
piano that were sounding. No, every tone was like an echoing drop of
water. Any one who admires the technic of art must bow before Liszt; he
that is charmed with the genial, the divine gift, bows still lower. The
Orpheus of our day has made tones sound through the great capital of
machinery and a Copenhagener has said that 'his fingers are simply
railroads and steam engines.' His genius is more powerful to bring
together the great minds of the world than all the railroads on earth.
The Orpheus of our day has preached music in the trade emporium of
Europe, and (at least for a moment) the people believed the gospel. The
spirit's gold has a truer ring than that of the world. People often use
the expression 'a sea of sound' without being conscious of its
significance, and such it is that streams from the piano at which Liszt
sits. The instrument appears to be changed into a whole orchestra. This
is accomplished by ten fingers, which possess a power of execution that
might be termed superhuman. They are guided by a mighty genius. It is a
sea of sound, which in its very agitation is a mirror for the life task
of each burning heart. I have met politicians who, at Liszt's playing,
conceived that peaceful citizens at the sound of the Marseillaise might
be so carried away that they might seize their guns and rush forth from
hearths and homes to fight for an idea! I have seen quiet Copenhageners,
with Danish autumnal coolness in their veins, become political
bacchantes at his playing. The mathematician has grown giddy at the
echoing fingers and the reckoning of the sounds. Young disciples
of Hegel (and among those the really gifted and not merely the
light-headed, who at the mere galvanic stream of philosophy make a
mental grimace) perceived in this sea of music the wave-like advances of
knowledge toward the shore of perfection. The poet found the rein of his
heart's whole lyric, or the rich garment of his boldest delineation. The
traveller (yes, I conclude with myself) receives musical pictures of
what he sees or will see. I heard his playing as it were an overture to
my journey. I heard how my heart throbbed and bled on my leaving home. I
heard the farewell of the waves--the waves that I should only hear again
on the cliffs of Terracina. Organ tones seemed to sound from Germany's
old cathedrals. The glaciers rolled from the Alpine hills, and Italy
danced in carnival dresses, and struck with her wooden sword while she
thought in her heart of Caesar, Horace and Raphael. Vesuvius and AEtna
burned. The trumpet of judgment resounded from the hills of Greece,
where the old gods are dead. Tones that I knew not--tones for which I
have no words--pointed to the East, the home of fancy, the poet's second
fatherland. When Liszt had done playing the flowers rained down on him.
Young, pretty girls, old ladies, who had once been pretty girls, too,
threw their bouquets. He had indeed thrown a thousand bouquets into
their hearts and brain.
"From Hamburg Liszt was to fly to London, there to strew new
tone-bouquets, there to breathe poetry over material working day life.
Happy man! who can thus travel throughout his whole life, always to see
people in their spiritual Sunday dress--yea, even in the wedding garment
of inspiration. Shall I often meet him? That was my last thought, and
chance willed it that we meet on a journey at a spot where I and my
readers would least expect it--met, became friends, and again separated.
But that belongs to the last chapter of this journey. He now went to the
city of Victoria--I to that of Gregory the Sixteenth."