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By Root 1656 0

Orchestra in mid-November. After watching Brahms conduct the Fourth, no doubt Bülow intended to show the Frankfurt audience that he could handle the symphony better than its composer could. Maybe Brahms suspected that, and that was part of the reason he allowed himself to be persuaded by an anti-Bülow faction to repeat the Fourth with the Frankfurt orchestra, just before the Meiningen arrived in town. When Bülow learned of it, enraged and humiliated at what appeared to be a calculated insult, he substituted Beethoven’s Seventh for Brahms’s symphony in his program. At the same time he sent a telegram to Meiningen resigning his post immediately. The resignation was expressed in such violent terms that the duke felt obliged to accept it.

There lay an unbelievable situation for two men who had worked together so long and so profitably. In his five years in Meiningen, Bülow had made the Hofkapelle Orchestra perhaps the finest ensemble in Europe, and the incomparable model for Brahms performance. Yet from old habit Brahms shrugged off the Frankfurt affair, treating the results of his tactlessness as if he could not care less. No one could know Hans von Bülow without understanding his hair-trigger sensibilities, his fierce pride of place. Yet after the insult of his performance Brahms actually compounded it by writing the conductor, “Once and for all, concerts and all that belongs to them do not count seriously with me, and I find it hard to think of last winter’s concerts as anything but a diversion.” With those words he waved away Bülow’s achievement with the orchestra, his championing of the Fourth and many other works, the meaning of his life. The conductor responded with admirable restraint, his teeth almost grinding on the page: “If tant bien que mal I make propaganda to convince people of the glory of your music, it is not done, Heaven knows, with the irreverent object of offering you a diversion.… However, each one as he pleases.”11

By that he meant their relations were at an end. In fact, remarkably enough, the friendship and collaboration would be resurrected—but not in Meiningen, because Bülow had left the orchestra for good. Brahms for his part would continue to enjoy the hospitality of the duke’s court, where for a short time the Meiningen orchestra was led by a young composer/conductor and Bülow protégé named Richard Strauss.

The Vienna premiere of the Fourth Symphony came in January 1886. As usual, Billroth geared up for the event by planning a postconcert celebration, this time at Sacher’s celebrated restaurant. He wrote Brahms that he would invite friends including Hanslick, Brüll, Richter, Faber, Goldmark, Door, Epstein, Kalbeck, Fuchs, and Ehrbar, all senza spouses. “I am in favor of anyone you wish to invite,” Brahms rumbled in reply, perhaps thinking of Bülow, “and no one is important to me!” But then he added to the list a few others, including his young friend Eusebius Mandyczewski, soon to take over from the dying C. F. Pohl as librarian of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and regular Brahms companion.12

As usual, Richter’s skimpy rehearsals with the Philharmonic made Brahms nervous; he observed in comparison, “Bülow has simply miraculous rehearsals.” Still, he declared himself pleased with the performance on January 17, 1886. Audience response was respectful but muted: no demonstrations from the Wagner Club, no ringing cheers. The dinner of Brahms’s circle at Sacher’s afterward proved a tense occasion.13 In next day’s review, Hanslick was hesitant and tight-lipped about “the composer’s severest test,” his “dark well.”14 Privately, Billroth told a friend that this time Brahms had not surpassed himself. When the surgeon wrote the composer, though, he put the best face on it: “One slowly learns to feel, when working at it, that it develops consistently, uncovering riches constantly and becoming more and more magnificent.” Brahms replied uneasily, “I gather from your letter that you are now on a better footing with the E Minor Symphony, and that gives me great joy. Hanslick I have read superficially because