In Leipzig Schumann And I Were Together Every Day And All Day
Long - And My Comprehension Of His Works Became Thereby More
Familiar And Intimate.
Since my first acquaintance with his
compositions, I have played many of them in private circles in
Milan, Vienna, etc., but without being able to win over my
hearers to them.
They lay, happily, much too far removed from the
insipid taste, which at that time absolutely dominated, for it to
be possible for any one to thrust them into the commonplace
circle of approbation. The public did not care for them, and the
majority of pianists did not understand them. In Leipzig even,
where I played the "Carneval" at my second concert in the
Gewandhaus, I did not succeed in obtaining my usual applause. The
musicians, together with those who were supposed to understand
music, had (with few exceptions) their ears still too tightly
stopped up to be able to comprehend this charming, tasteful
"Carneval," the various numbers of which are harmoniously
combined in such artistic fancy. I do not doubt that, later on,
this work will maintain its natural place in universal
recognition by the side of the "Thirty-three Variations on a
Waltz of Diabelli" by Beethoven (to which, in my opinion, it is
superior even in melodic invention and importance). The frequent
ill-success of my performances of Schumann's compositions, both
in private circles and in public, discouraged me from including
and keeping them in the programmes of my concerts which followed
so rapidly on one another - programmes which, partly from want of
time and partly from carelessness and satiety of the "Glanz-
Periode" ["Splendor period"] of my pianoforte-playing, I seldom,
except in the rarest cases, planned myself, but gave them now
into this one's hands, and now that one, to choose what they
liked.
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