human
Hold thou my _fermate_ [pauses] long and terribly. Wagner was a most exacting critic, but we venture to think that he would have been fairly satisfied with last night's rendering of the first movement. The contrast of the masculine and feminine elements which are inherent in the first and second subjects respectively was presented with all possible effect; the pauses were as long and terrible as Wagner could have desired, and were sustained with a perfectly equable tone-delivery; the beautiful unaccompanied phrase for oboe--which on the recurrence of the passage takes the place of the _fermata_, or pause, at the twenty-first measure--was given with all possible force of expression; and many other individual beauties of the rendering might be cited. The second movement is less taxing for the performers than the rest of the work; it was given in a manner well in keeping with the spirit of the symphony, which is like some vast work of sculpture in bronze, such as the gates of the Baptistery at Florence. Just such plastic force in the moulding of mighty tone-elements and just such nobility of the imagination did Beethoven possess as enabled Ghiberti to mould those wonderful gates, concerning which Michelangelo said that they were worthy to be the gates of Paradise. The scherzo, too, was an artistic triumph for the orchestra. Not a point was missed in that wonderful and uncanny tone-picture. A dance of demons it has been called; but it must be remembered that many great artists have treated grotesque and grisly subjects with an ineffably beautiful touch, such as we see, for example, in Alfred Rethel's marvellous drawing
gpt
Death the Friend.