I congratulate you most warmly on the performance of your opera.
You may safely expect various disagreeables in connection
therewith, which are inseparable from musical work. The great
thing is to remain cheerful, and to do something worth doing. The
cuckoo take the rest! -
Let me have a talk with you about the Zellner matter in Vienna,
if, as seems likely, I have to go there at the end of May for the
performance of my Mass. Meanwhile thank you very much for the
pains you have taken over the proof-sheets of this long-
protracted work, and I should be glad if the whole were ready to
come out by the time I reach Vienna.
Tausig, who is to come out in Berlin at the beginning of January,
will probably come with me. There is again a real "bravo,"
[Literally, iron-eater.] as Hummel said of me when he heard me in
Paris in the twenties.
Will you be so kind as to give the enclosed letters to
Winterberger and Rubinstein? How is our friend Winterberger
getting on in the not very suitable atmosphere of Vienna? Let me
know something about him soon. Yours ever,
F. Liszt
Weymar, December 5th, 1857.
189. To Hofcapellmeister Stein In Sondershausen.
[Autograph in the possession of M. Alfred Bovet at Valentigney. -
The addressee, a first-rate conductor (born 1818), lived from
1853 in Sondershausen; died 1864.]
Let me give you once more my hearty thanks, dear friend, for the
delightful day you gave me at Sondershausen, which continues so
brightly and pleasantly in my recollection. The rare consummation
with which your orchestra solved one of the most difficult tasks,
and brought "what one hears on the mountains" [Liszt's Mountain
Symphony] to the impressive understanding of the ears in the
valley (if not indeed under the water and worse still),
strengthens me in my higher endeavors, - and you, dear friend,
will have to bear some of the responsibility if I go on writing
more such "confused," "formless," and, for the every-day critic,
quite "fathomless" things.
Singer [A letter from this first-rate violinist is on the same
sheet with Liszt's.] needs no further recommendation from me, as
he is already known to you as an eminent virtuoso. Especially at
Court concerts his own refined and brilliant qualities are placed
in their most favorable light.
If it is possible for you to take an opportunity of bringing out
my dear and extraordinary budding genius Carl Tausig ["The last
of the virtuosi;" as Weitzmann called him; born at Warsaw 1841;
died at Leipzig 1871.] at the Court, I promise you that he will
do honor to your recommendation.
