Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [371]
In the middle of January 1896, Brahms conducted the two piano concertos with Eugen d’Albert and the Berlin Philharmonic—another milestone, his last appearance anywhere as a conductor. At a dinner hosted by Joachim the violinist was trying to propose a toast, “To the greatest composer …” when Brahms jumped up and shouted, “Quite right, here’s to Mozart’s health!” and went around clinking everyone’s glass.7
In that trip to Berlin, Brahms also visited a new friend, the eminent historical painter Adolph von Menzel. Brahms had met him in Berlin, at the premiere of the clarinet pieces. In 1854, Menzel had sketched the young Joachim playing a recital with Clara Schumann. In 1891 he sketched Mühlfeld in the premiere of the Clarinet Trio and Quintet, making him look a sort of Greek demigod, and sent the drawing to Brahms with a note: “We often think of you here, and … we confess our suspicions that on a certain night the Muse itself appeared in person (disguised in the evening dress of the Meiningen Court) for the purpose of executing a certain woodwind part. On this page I tried to capture the sublime vision.” Both Menzel and Brahms sported the high Prussian order “Pour le Mérite.” Brahms was charmed not only by the art but the artist, scampish and indefatigable in his late seventies, who could keep up with anyone at eating and drinking and banter. Menzel’s nephew wrote Brahms after a visit in 1892, “We have never yet had such fine and enjoyable carousals as those of the December days when you were with us.”8 Menzel may have represented the joie de vivre Brahms aspired to in his next decade, if in fact he aspired to live that long.
FRIEND MARIE RÜCKERT SAID that in these years Brahms looked like a lion from the front, from the rear—in his characteristic walking pose of arms cocked behind his back—like a loafing literary man. In Vienna he appeared antiquated, a figure from the past: his black clothes, hefty frame (it was something of a strain for him now to reach past his belly to the keys), bowler hat, and pince-nez stood out from the more fashionable, trimmer clothes and figures of his younger friends.
Among those friends was newspaper critic Max Kalbeck, who had been part of the circle for years. Surely Brahms, who had set a couple of Kalbeck’s early poems, viewed this young journalist as a candidate for a biographer. So it turned out: the four dense, rambling volumes Kalbeck produced in the first decades of the next century would be the perennial source of information on the composer. As he had with Widmann, Brahms may have groomed Kalbeck for the job. At the same time, Kalbeck made an ideal contribution to the Brahms entourage—witty, articulate, dashingly handsome, selflessly devoted. Richard Specht wrote that Max was “ready to go with [Brahms] through thick and thin, to love what he loved …, to hate what he hated, and to follow him and his work unconditionally.”9
Brahms treated this devotee with a mingling of kindness, concern, and backhanded contempt. Specht was present for a dinner at Ignaz Brüll’s when Kalbeck was rhapsodizing on Cherubini as an opera composer, at the expense of Wagner. He become so caught up in his eloquence that he did not notice Brahms’s color rising, until suddenly the master smashed his fist on the table and shouted, “For God’s sake, Kalbeck, don’t talk about things you can’t understand!” Kalbeck went pale and left without a word. A few days later Specht ran into him on the street. “What do you think of what I have to put up with?” Kalbeck said. “This is my reward for years of work and faithful friendship and active devotion! But this time I didn’t pocket the revered master’s insults: I wrote him a long letter and told him exactly what I think of him.” Specht was naturally curious to know Brahms’s reaction. Kalbeck smiled sadly.