Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [311]
Bruckner himself, though conservative and Catholic, disavowed antisemitism, or at least kept his prejudices out of sight (the young Gustav Mahler was not his only disciple of Jewish background). If many of Bruckner’s supporters were antisemites—that was their affair; he needed all the friends he could get. For Brahms and his circle it amounted to an unholy alliance of a music and a political agenda both of which they abhorred. In 1891, Brahms’s friends Theodor Billroth and Viktor von Miller zu Aichholz (neither of them Jewish) helped found the “Party of Resistance to Antisemitism.” It was around this time that Brahms groaned to Richard Heuberger, “I can scarcely speak of it, it seems so despicable to me. If the endless [immigration] of Galician Jews to Vienna were hindered, I’d favor it; but the rest is vileness!”43
These political ramifications and resonances inflected Brahms’s campaign against Bruckner, the only case where he patently did harm to an artist weaker than himself. Yet despite Brahms’s power in musical Vienna—and by then there was no one more powerful—he could not stop the slow rise of Bruckner, who in his retirement lived at the Belvedere Palace, supported by the emperor, and, despite the incessant bombardment of Hanslick’s heaviest guns, saw the triumph in Vienna of his Brobdingnagian Eighth Symphony.
Perhaps part of Brahms’s unwontedly bitter resistance came from something else too. Wagner was not only manifestly a more important composer than Bruckner, he also worked in a medium that essentially resided outside the concert hall. Bruckner was the only serious living competitor Brahms had as a symphonist, at least in Germanic countries. Brahms was unused to competitors on his turf, and he did not appreciate them. Maybe now and then his usually unbroken sleep was troubled by the nightmare that someday, somebody would propose a fourth “Great B” to add to Hans von Bülow’s three.
THERE WAS A MEMORABLE MATINEE in Vienna on March 8, 1885. Violinist and Brahms discovery Marie Soldat, now twenty and fresh from her studies with Joachim, gave a dazzling performance of the Violin Concerto at the Musikverein. Brahms was beside himself with delight at this fresh-faced young woman playing his concerto so beautifully. Above the torrential applause afterward, Brahms’s broken tenor could be heard shouting from the balcony: “Isn’t the little soldier a hell of a fellow? Couldn’t she hold her own with ten men? Who could do it better?”44 After the concert he squired Marie to the Prater’s merry-go-rounds and Wurstl puppet show, and in the evening took her to see Macbeth at the Burgtheater.
That month saw a historic meeting of the newly founded Wiener Tonkünstlerverein, a musicians’ club of which Brahms became honorary president the next year. On this evening he had a pleasant chat with visiting guests Liszt and Rubinstein. The only sour note came when a lady insisted on snipping locks of hair from each of the famous men. In the process she stuck Brahms’s finger with scissors, at which he exploded in rage.45
Every distinguished musician visiting the city was invited to the Monday meetings and dinners of the club, held in the Mozart Room of the Musikverein. The meetings often included a short concert. Members had indelible memories of Brahms at the piano in those congenial surroundings, accompanying the best singers in town in his newest lieder. He also served on committees that determined programs and handed out prizes and commissions to composers. Though the club was an all-male outfit, they gave composition awards to several women. A certain amount