Besprechung der Aufführung der 7. Symphonie in München [vor dem 16.8.1911] in The Manchester Guardian Nr. 20292 auf S. 5, signiert "S. L." und datiert "Wednesday" [16.8.1911]:

"            THE MUNICH FESTIVAL.

(FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)

                              MUNICH, WEDNESDAY.

     The first "Ring" cycle of the Wagner Festival in Munich improved very much as it went on [... ausführlich über diese und andere Wagner-Aufführungen (u. a. "Tristan" unter Richard Strauss) ...].

     "Die Meistersinger" holds its own as the most popular work of Wagner here as everywhere, [... hohes Lob (u. a. für Feinhals und Knote) ...] was heard to greater advantage in this opera than anywhere. Bruckner's Seventh Symphony was undoubtedly the most interesting feature of the first two of the nine orchestral concerts, at which the whole cycle of the Beethoven symphonies will be conducted by Ferdinand Loewe. Mr. Loewe is an out-and-out admirer of Bruckner, and he conducted the symphony, which lasted an hour and five minutes, from memory. It was played also with sustained enthusiasm from the first note to the last, and with a thorough grasp of its great scope and style. Its reception was far more enthusiastic than that of any other of the five symphonies yet given. The audience at its conclusion recalled the conductor to the platform time after time. The audience was far more exclusively German than at the opera, and represented a city that is of all cities perhaps the least likely to make a mistake in its judgment of music. Heard perfectly given as it was, I cannot believe that the music would not have pleased almost equally well a Manchester audience. To me it was the most inspiriting experience I have had at this Munich Festival. In Bruckner's hands the orchestra seems to become a new organism. Not the strings, but the wind instruments dominate and control it. We feel it as something that not only throbs but breathes. Possibly familiarity with the organ has given Bruckner this style, but the result is music that has an expense like that of the open air. There is little of the vigorous and fragmentary melodic exposition that is the basis of style in the older symphonic writers. Instead there is a sustained harmonic expanse. One could imagine some such music, if only the scale of its performance were great enough to be made effective in the open air, might make a noble democratic appeal beyond what music confined within halls and walls can ever make. The slow movement of this Seventh Symphony was written under the influence of a premonition of Wagner's death, and the use of four tubas and the deep harmonies of brass instruments give it sublime grandeur and scope. These symphonic concerts revealed greater intensity of the string playing than in our English orchestras. In the wind instruments, although the melodic treatment is more flexible, the quality of tone is not so pure nor so well controlled. Seven double bass players, working with their utmost vigour, gave an unwonted vastness to the more imposing passages of the Unfinished Symphony of Schubert, but I hardly like the symphony any better, treated in this grand way. The Symphony of Brahms in C minor was excellent as a whole, but the famous horn melody was coarsely played. Beethoven was rather outshone in these first two concerts, but he will hold his own later.

                                                      S. L." (*).

 

Brief von Friedrich Waldeck an Franz Gräflinger:
     Der Boykott-Auruf gegen das Bruckner-Buch ["Bausteine"] sei an "jeden Musiker von einigem Einfluß" gegangen, auch an Ludwig Karpath, der sich aber geweigert habe zu unterschreiben. Ein Unterzeichner [vermutlich Camillo Horn] schäme sich jetzt dafür, "auf den Leim gegangen" zu sein (**).