something of flippancy in it after Mottl's gigantic rendering: one
longed for the dramatic hanging back of the time at the phrase, "Doch
ach! den Tod, ich fand ihn nicht!" which is of such importance in the
overture. On the other hand, a more splendid reading of the first
movement of the Fifth symphony I have never heard; but the rest of the
movements were hardly to be called readings at all. The most devoted
admirers of Lamoureux--and I was his fairly devoted admirer
myself--will not deny that the slow movement is full of poetry, the
scherzo of a remote, mystical emotion, and the Finale of a wondrous
combination of sadness, regret and high triumphant joy; and anyone who
claims that Lamoureux gave us the slightest hint of those qualities
must be more than his admirer--must be his infatuated slave. The last
movement even wanted richness; for that excessive clearness which
prevented the tones blending into masses, and forced one to
distinguish the separate notes of the flutes, the oboes, the
clarinets, and so forth, seemed to rob the music of all its body, its
solidity. But, when all is said, Lamoureux was, in his special way, a
noble master of the orchestra; and, even if I could not regard him as
a great interpreter of the greatest music, I admit that the side of
the great music which he revealed was well worth knowing, and should
indeed be known to all who would understand the great music.

When I wrote the preceding paragraphs on Lamoureux, some of my
colleagues were good enough to neglect their own proper business while
they put me right about orchestral playing in general and that of
Lamoureux in particular. These gentlemen told me that, when Beethoven
(whom they knew personally) wrote certain notes, he intended them and
no others to be played; that the more accurate a rendering, the closer
it approaches to the work as it existed in Beethoven's mind; that,
ergo, Lamoureux's playing of Beethoven, being the most accurate yet
heard in England, was the best, the truest, the most Beethovenish yet
heard in England. All which I flatly deny, and describe as the foolish
ravings of uninformed theorists. Only unpractical dreamers fancy that
a composer thinks of "notes" when he composes. He hears music with his
mental ear in the first place, and he afterwards sets down such notes
as experience has taught him will reproduce approximately what he has
heard when they are played upon the instrument for which his
composition is inte