Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/554



Meanwhile he was assiduously adding to his compositions, especially in the dramatic field. His last years were spent mostly in Berlin and Dresden, where he continued to give important recitals. The success of Wagner embittered him, so that he professed despair about the whole future of music. With the so-called 'neo-Russian' school he had little sympathy, though for it he had laid foundations.

His works for the piano include 5 concertos, fantasias with orchestra, 4 sonatas, a suite, preludes, études, barcarolles, tone-pictures and many salon-pieces, besides works for four hands or two pianos. The same qualities appear in them as in his larger works (see secs. 205, 214)—considerable melodic richness, fluent and often grandiose plans, a striving after extreme distinction, and yet a lack of inspiration, compacted structure and sustained power. As an author, he is known from Memoirs (1889) and sarcastic critiques (1892-7).

His brother Nicolai Rubinstein (d. 1881), five years younger, was in 1844-6 his fellow-student at Berlin, thence returning to Moscow. There in 1859 he founded the Musical Society and in 1854 the conservatory, of which he was the head almost 20 years, besides giving concerts regularly at St. Petersburg. He, too, was a remarkable player, an able conductor and an excellent composer of salon and concert music.

With Anton Rubinstein at St. Petersburg was associated from 1852 the talented Austrian Theodor Leschetizki, who had been trained by Czerny and Sechter, and had begun concert-giving at 12 (1842). After more than 25 years there as teacher, conductor and composer, from 1878 he toured extensively and in 1880, marrying his pupil Annette Essipoff, established himself at Vienna, becoming one of the best-known of teachers. His works include many striking concert-pieces and an opera (1867).

Hans von Bülow (d. 1894), born at Dresden in 1830, was first trained there by Wieck and Eberwein. In 1848-9, while beginning law-study at Leipsic and Berlin, he kept up his musical work, finally choosing it for his career. Amid the revolutionary ferment of the times he became so much interested in Wagner that in 1850-1 he followed him to Zurich, receiving from him a strong impulse to orchestral conducting. After brief service as conductor in Switzerland and study with Liszt at Weimar, in 1853-5 he gradually won his way as a virtuoso, in 1857 succeeding Kullak as teacher in the Stern conservatory at Berlin and in 1858 becoming court-pianist there. In 1857 he married Cosima Liszt, from whom in 1869 he was divorced (she becoming Wagner's wife in 1870). From 1864, at Wagner's urgency, he was court-pianist at Munich and from 1867 royal choirmaster and head of the conservatory, but in 1869 removed to Florence, where he was active on behalf of German music. Resuming tours in 1872 and visiting America in 1875-6, in 1878-80 he was court-conductor at Hanover, and in 1880-5 in a similar position at Meiningen, where he developed an orchestra of extraordinary brilliance. In 1885-8, after another American tour, he taught much at Frankfort and Berlin, besides conducting concerts at St. Petersburg. From 1888 he led a successful concert series at Hamburg until his health failed.

In his case the educational instinct was always prominent. From 1849 he wrote many articles in advocacy of Wagner and new ideas. At Munich he devoted great pains to the production of Wagner's Tristan and Die Meister-*