_Concerto in G major_, for piano: Beethoven (played by Ferruccio
Busoni).
_Lieder: An die enfernie Geliebte_: Beethoven (sung by Ludwig
Hess).
_Choral Symphony_: Beethoven (conducted by Gustav Mahler).
* * * * *
M. Chevillard alone represented our French musicians at the festival;
and they could have made no better choice of a conductor. But Germany
had delegated her two greatest composers, Strauss and Mahler, to come to
conduct their newest compositions. And I think it would not have been
too much to set up one of our own foremost composers to combat the glory
which these two enjoy in their own country.
M. Chevillard had been asked to conduct, not one of the works of our
recent masters, like Debussy or Dukas, whose style he renders to
perfection, but Franck's _Les Beatitudes_, a work whose spirit he does
not, to my mind, quite understand. The mystic tenderness of Franck
escapes him, and he brings out only what is dramatic. And so that
performance of _Les Beatitudes_, though in many respects fine, left an
imperfect idea of Franck's genius.
But what seemed inconceivable, and what justly annoyed M.
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