February 6.
Yesterday was the concert. Brahms played his Pianoforte Concerto in D Minor superbly. I especially noted his emphasizing each of those tremendous shakes in the first movement by placing a short rest between the last note of one and the first small note before the next. During those short stops he would lift his hands up high and let them down on the keys with a force like that of a lion’s paw. It was grand.
Dear old Isegrim (Henschel’s footnote: ” “Isegrim,” the poetic name for bear was the sobriquet of the composer Julius Otto Grimm, an old friend of Brahms’, who was them at the head of the various music institutions of Münster.) conducted and fairly chuckled with joy at every beautiful phrase. The glorious but horribly difficult “Triumphal Hymn” conducted Brahms, went splendidly. It was a veritable triumph for the composer. The joy and gratification expressed in Brahms’ face at the end, when acknowledging the enthusiastic acclamations of audience, chorus, and orchestra, was evidently caused as much by the consciousness of having written a truly great work, as by its reception and appreciation; a most welcome change from the affected excess of modesty often exhibited on concert platforms.
My throat not being quite well yet, I changed, with Brahms’ approval, the dreaded phrase
by which Brahms’ intention of emphasizing the word “heavens” was still carried out, the note “c” remaining the highest of the phrase.
Notes
Brahms’ Triumphlied, Op. 55.
Theory of Music 