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mutual good humor. The concert opened with the familiar overture from “William
Tell,” which was led by Mr. Carl Bergmann in his accustomed scholarly and artistic
manner, and which was followed by a very fair rendition of the introduction and the
third act of “Lohengrin,” led by the same gentleman. Although both pieces were
applauded, there seemed to be more or less impatience among the audience.
When the lion-headed Vienna dance composer at last stepped upon the platform the
repressed excitement burst forth, and the house shook with a storm of applause.
Strauss seemed surprised and pleased at his reception, and bowed again and again,
and a dozen times more before he could find opportunity to begin.
As he stood there before his immense audience, he seemed a quite, handsome,
dark-haired, pale-faced little man, with a gentlemanly bearing and genteel figure;
about his head, lion-like; about his body, a petit maitre of the Paris salon. He might
be one of fifty quiet cavaliers that one may see in any ball room, for all the
impression he seemed to make on his audience. But when his last graceful
obeisance is made, he receives from his servant his violin and bow, gives a sweeping
glance around his orchestra, raises his arm horizontally as high as his head, and
stands ready for the first bar. Now he has become transformed. He is no longer the
dandy, but the artist, and the commander of artists. His nervous figure begins to
move; he quivers with a sudden electric vitality, as a racer does just before the start.
Then there is a mighty sweep of the violin bow, a stamp of the foot, and he plunges
headlong into the excitement of the moment. On and on he carries musicians and
audience, thrilling the most apathetic, arousing the dullest, and enchaining the
attention of all. His performers, catching his meaning as if by intuition, watch every
movement of his hand, every glance of his eye, and every changing expression of
face.
Whether the passages are piano or forte, slow or fast, wild and weird, as in the
Circassian March, voluptuous and languishing, as in the Blue Danube Waltz, or
boisterous, as in his intoxicating galops, they seem compelled to obey his slightest
wish, by the sheer force of his personal magnetism. Look through the audience,
and one will notice a thousand heads swaying in unison with the music, and hear
the light tapping of a thousand feet keeping time with the musicians.
Strauss seems to forget that there is a soul in the house except the sixty-three
artists he is directing; oblivious to all else, he is alive to the progress of the piece.
Now he shakes his shaggy, mane-like hair and buries his head in the violin case as
though he wished to get into the very soul of music that dwells within the depths;
now, like a flashing cimetar wielded by a Saladin, his bow sweeps in long curves
about his head, or threshes in downward strokes, as though it were a whip with
which he was striking a recumbent object. In another moment, raising both arms
and flinging them about, he calls upon the reserved forces of his orchestra to come
in and give effect to a fortissimo phrase. Throughout all, he stamps the measure of
time with first one foot and then the other, and, so to speak, handles his legs in
such fashion as to make them twinkle a language of their own quite peculiar and
Dickens-like.
It is impossible to describe the personal appearance of Johann Strauss in a manner
at all satisfactory; he must be seen to be appreciated. There is something wild,
goblin-like, almost maniacal, we might say, about the man when under the
inspiration of music, and he sets at utter defiance all our notions of leaderlike
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