126 To Anton Rubinstein
Your “Dialogue Dramatique” a propos of your “Ocean” is a little chef-d’oeuvre, and I shall keep it, in order, later on, to put it at the disposal of some future Lenz, who will undertake your Catalogue and the analysis of the three styles of Van II. We laughed with all our hearts, a deux, in the little blue room of the Altenburg, and we form the most sincere wishes that Gurkhaus, [Principal of the music firm F. Kistner in Leipzig.] the deus ex machine, may have come to put you out of the uncomfortable state of suspense in which the Gewandhaus public did you the honor to leave you. To tell the truth, this decrescendo of applause, at the third movement of your Symphony, surprises me greatly, and I would have wagered without hesitation that it would be the other way. A great disadvantage for this kind of composition is that, in our stupid musical customs, often very anti-musical, it is almost impossible to appeal to a badly informed public by a second performance immediately after the first; and at Leipzig, as elsewhere, one only meets with a very small number of people who know how to apply cause and effect intelligently and enthusiastically to a piece out of the common, and signed with the name of a composer who is not dead. Moreover I suspect that your witty account is tainted with a species of modesty, and I shall wait, like the general public, for the accounts in the newspapers in order to form an opinion of your success. Whatever may come of it, and however well or ill you are treated by the public or criticism, my appreciation of the value that I recognize in your works will not vary, for it is not without a well-fixed criterion, quite apart from the fashion of the day, and the high or low tide of success, that I estimate your compositions highly, finding much to praise in them, except the reservation of some criticisms which almost all sum up as follows—that your extreme productiveness has not as yet left you the necessary leisure to imprint a more marked individuality on your works, and to complete them. For, as it has been very justly said, it is not enough to do a thing, but it must be completed. This said and understood, there is no one who admires more than I do your remarkable and abundant faculties, or who takes a more sincere and friendly interest in your work. You know that I have set my mind upon your “Ocean” being given here, and I shall beg you also to give us the pleasure of playing one of your Concertos. In about ten days I will write and tell you the date of the first concert of our orchestra.
Meanwhile your “Chasseurs de Siberie” will be given again on Wednesday next (the 22nd). I will tell Cornelius to give you tidings of it, unless the fancy takes you to come and hear it, in order to make a diversion from your “Voix interieures” [internal voices] of Leipzig.
Write to me soon, my dear Van II., and believe me wholly your very affectionate and devoted friend,
F. Liszt
November 19th, 1854