He was equally surprised at the simple
beauty of the other numbers on the programme, and wondered not a little
at his own perfectly absorbed attention during Hofmann's playing of a
rather long concerto.
The pianist's performance was so beautiful that the audience was
uproarious in its approval; it had calculated, of course, upon an
encore, and recalled the pianist again and again until he had appeared
and bowed his thanks several times. But there was no encore; the stage
hands appeared and moved the piano to one side, and the audience
relapsed into unsatisfied and rather bewildered silence.
Then followed Bok's publicity work in the newspapers, beginning the next
day, exonerating Hofmann and explaining the situation. The following
week, with Mischa Elman as soloist, the audience once more tried to have
its way and its cherished encore, but again none was forthcoming. Once
more the newspapers explained; the battle was won, and the no-encore
rule has prevailed at the Philadelphia Orchestra concerts from that day
to this, with the public entirely resigned to the idea and satisfied
with the reason therefor.
But the bewildered Bok could not make out exactly what had happened to
his preconceived notion about symphonic music. He attended the following
Saturday evening concert; listened to a Brahms symphony that pleased him
even more than had "The New World," and when, two weeks later, he heard
the Tschaikowski "Pathetique" and later the "Unfinished" symphony, by
Schubert, and a Beethoven symphony, attracted by each in turn, he
realized that his prejudice against the whole question of symphonic
music had been both wrongly conceived and baseless.
Pages:
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385