The New York Times Nr. 17849 bespricht auf S. 11 das Konzert vom 6.12.1906 mit der 7. Symphonie:

"   THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTA AGAIN

[...]

     Dr. Muck made the programme of the first concert of the second visit of the Boston Symphony Orchestra chiefly to consist of Anton Bruckner's seventh symphony. [... Liszt (Rosenthal) und Beethoven ...] There was a large audience, which listened with amazing patience and interest to Bruckner's long symphony and indicated appreciation of it and of the superb performance it received.

     Twenty years ago when Theodor Thomas first played it here, it was not so. [... Stichwörter: Flucht des Publikums ... extremer linker Wagner-Flügel ... Einfluss von Richard Wagner ... Kritik am Finale ... "the peasant who remained a peasant" ...]

     [... "naive musician" ... Parteikämpfe in Wien ... über Karl Muck ...]. It was evident that this symphony was an open book to him, and the performance he gave was memorable in its sympathy and its fidelity to the spirit of the work and its technical finish.

     [... 4 Zeilen über Rosenthal und Liszt ...]." [keine Signatur] (*).

[Scan des Artikels beim Verfasser]

 

Die New York Tribune Nr. 21936 schreibt auf S. 7 (die Kolumne signiert "H. E. K." = Krehbiel):

"                      THE BOSTON ORCHESTRA.

     Dr. Muck took occasion at the second evening concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall last night to bring forward Bruckner's Symphony in E major, No. 7. To judge from several announcements put forth by the management, this symphony is one for which the distinguished conductor has stood sponsor in quite a number of musical capitals. It is to be assumed from the zeal which he displayed in conducting it last night, and the superb results which he achieved with his orchestra, that he has an affectionate interest either in the work or the memory of its composer. In one respect he was more circumspect than Mr. Theodore Thomas, who gave the work its first American hearings twenty years ago–in the summer of 1886, at a concert in Chicago, and on November 13 following, at a concert of the Philharmonic Society here. Mr. Thomas placed the symphony at the end of his programme; Dr. Muck at the beginning of his. Twenty years is a long time for anybody to keep a musical composition in mind and a sufficient period for those who heard it at the beginning to be willing to hear it again for the sake of observing whether or not their first impressions would meet with confirmation. Therefore the audience that filled all the stalls and boxes of the large room heard the work from beginning to end, either enjoying or enduring it for full seventy minutes. Twenty years ago this was not the case. There being no promise of other things to follow, a small contingent of the most serious minded audience which New York boasts left the hall after the second movement, and a larger contingent after the third. Only two-thirds of those who came to the concert with curiosity whetted by the name of the new composer and the reports touching the reception of what was then set down as his greatest work remained to the end. Last night the case was different: good manners and a desire to hear the things which were to follow [... Rosenthal mit Liszt, Beethoven ...] kept them in their seats, and a praiseworthy spirit led them to bestow a considerable degree of approval upon either the work or its performance, or both. But the applause was neither loud enough nor cordial enough to prevent the thought from arising that possibly the attitude toward the performance on the part of the listeners was akin to that of the Hindoo before his idol–they knew that it was ugly, but felt that it was great. Twenty years ago this reviewer expressed the thought that after a lapse of twenty-five years the public might accept the symphony as beautiful music. Four-fifths of the time has past, twenty years of restless endeavor on the part of the disciples of the amiable and ingenuous old Viennese professor to win acceptance for his message; but its grandeur and its beauty do not seem to be manifest. It is still impossible to discern any plenitude  of beautiful thoughts or logical development and symmetrical organic structure in the symphony, or to accept his cyclopean piling up of sections in lieu of the method of the masters. A more eloquent plea than was made for it last night can scarcely be imagined; but we must remain unconverted.

     Bruckner's name had appeared but once on a local programme before Mr. Thomas brought this symphony forward. A short time before Mr. Walter Damrosch performed the symphony in D minor at a concert of the Symphony Society. Thereby hangs a tale which might as well be told now. It was at a time when the old rivalry in the pursuit of novelties, which used to enliven the symphony seasons, was still in existence. Both Mr. Damrosch and Mr. Thomas were eager to be first in the field with the new work that had caused considerable noise in two senses in Germany. Mr. Thomas was probably a careless reader. At any rate, he secured what he supposed was the work, and put it in rehearsal in Steinway Hall. At the conclusion of the rehearsal he met a friend who had come to hear the novelty, and remarked to him that he was disappointed in the Bruckner symphony; he could find nothing in it and wondered what the German critics had made so great a commotion about. His friend was a more careful observer of foreign affairs and quietly called his attention to the fact that he had not been rehearsing the new work, but its predecessor in D minor. Meanwhile Mr. Damrosch had also secured the symphony in D minor, and, though he knew it was not the much heralded one, he still considered it worth performing. And so he was the first to introduce Bruckner to New York.

[... der Dirigent als Violinvirtuose ...]

                                                  H. E. K." (**).

 

Auch die Kritik in The Sun Nr. 98 auf S. 5 [vermutlich wie am 9.12.1906 W. J. Henderson] widmet sich fast ausschließlich der Symphonie:
"         A SYMPHONY BY BRUCKNER.

     In the order of incidents a concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra came around again last night at Carnegie Hall. The programme consisted of Anton Bruckner's E major symphony, the seventh of his series; [... Liszt, Beethoven, Rosenthal (schnellstmögliches Finale) ...]. For this let us bless him, because it came sooner to an end.

     For those who are more interested in creative than in performing musicians the Bruckner symphony was the important matter of the evening. This composition was produced here twenty years ago by the Philharmonic Society under Theodore Thomas in the Metropolitan Opera House. At that time it struck a chill to the hearts of its hearers, many of whom departed from the auditorium after the second movement. Mr. Krehbiel in his "Review of the New York Musical Season" said: "It may be beautiful in twenty-five years; it is not beautiful now." At the same time he took the newspapers of the day to task for their hasty and inconsiderate condemnation of the composition and made note of some striking things in the first movement and moments in the second "approaching grandeur."

     Last night this second movement was warmly applauded and at the end of the symphony Dr. Muck, the conductor, was compelled to bow several times in recognition of the continued demonstration of pleasure. In the end he called upon the entire orchestra to rise and acknowledge the favor of the audience. It looked as if Bruckner had come into his own, yet despite the incontrovertible fact that our musical perceptions have widened and deepened in twenty years and that our æsthetic palates have learned to hunger for harmonies that bite and burn, it was impossible to avoid the belief that the applause was rather a tribute to the masterly conquest of tonal difficulties than to the charm of the work itself.

     Hardened observers of musical doings are not a little sceptical as to the readiness of large concert audiences to take joy in music conceding so little to the taste for sensuous beauty and demanding so much intellectual application to its intricate development. Bruckner's works have been heard infrequently in New York, which is a city quite unacquainted with the reasons for hostility to this composer so long existent in Austria. The war between the Brucknerites and the "Brahmsianer" is unknown here. Whatever Bruckner has to say to us is heard without prejudice.

     Therefore with judicial calm we can say this morning that the general estimate placed on this symphony twenty years ago was in its fundamental marshalling of facts just but that it failed to appreciate the true worth of the work as an intellectual edifice and of the notably lofty and eloquent character of its second movement. The first movement is a remarkable piece of composition. Its thematic matter would be a fortune to some of the tone splashers of to-day, while its superb mastery of the wealth of orchestral counterpoint, the real counterpoint that does not merely find issue in unexpected and shocking assaults upon the ear and upon the analytical faculty of the mind but rather produces new and speaking results out of the meeting of melodic thoughts, is not equalled by any of the much vaunted masters of the Munich dynasty.

     As for the second movement, this is indeed an inspiration. Its second theme is one of the most beautiful thoughts to be found in all symphonic literature. The serious fault of this part of the symphony is a want of continence in the development, which is overelaborated so that the repetitions of the subject matter in their original shape are too numerous and consequently weaken the structure. Of the shcerzo [sic] little can be said in praise. It has originality of style, but it is an ugly style. Here, too, bald repetition, insistent wearisome reiteration of the melodic fragment first pealed by the trumpet is carried to the very verge of inanity. The trio affords welcome relief, but is itself made by force of contrast to appear to be better than it actually is.

     The finale is desperately involved and has episodes of ugliness which would delight the mind of Richard Strauss. The recurrence at the end of the pedal point used in the first movement, a pedal point which in harmony and instrumental color bears a dangerous resemblance to that at the beginning of "Rheingold," is a tiresome and meaningless device. There are several passages in the work which tread close upon the heels of Wagner and in the scherzo the echoes of "Die Meistersinger" are not secondary, but primary.

     If this essay at a cursory review of the composition means anything at all it means that the work is uncommonly uneven in merit, that it has only flashes of inspiration, admirable though they are; that it is laboriously built, is prolix and too frequently plunges into that ocean of discord upon which floats the bark of Strauss. We have had twenty years to grow up to this variety of music, and we still find our ears pleading against the vain arguments of our brains. We strive to convince ourselves that music is winging her flight into realms of new harmonic thought, but we hunger for elemental beauty as we find it in the immortal works of certain masters, though clothed in various garb.

     The sincerity of Bruckner, the chastity of his artistic feeling, his profound intellectuality and his firm command of the technics of his art bespeak for him an honorable position among composers. But when it comes to asking us, as his misguided Viennese friends asked their contemporaries, to accept him as the opponent and rival of Brahms we are compelled after all these years to enter a verdict of "Not proven." [keine Signatur]" (***).

 

Besprechung des Konzerts durch Edward Ziegler in der New York World:

"[...] It would seem from all indications that Dr. Karl Muck, the new conductor of this orchestra, has breathed not only new artistic life, but also new financial life into this magnificent organization. His conducting last night was again an evidence of his greatness as a leader of musicians and a swayer of audiences. He held his hearers' interest through the long Bruckner work, which lasts more than an hour, and he created a furore of enthusiasm by his leading of the well known Beethoven overture, "Leonore No. 3." He is a man of few words with his baton, but the orchestra follows every movement and gesture with perfect sympathetic understanding of what this forceful man wants. The result is a series of highly interesting leadings and wonderfully performed interpretations. The one tear that besets the music lover is that the German emperor will not grant Muck further leave of absence after the present season, for Muck is a favorite of the emperor and great conductors are scarce." (°).