especial interest and sympathy of his listeners. Casting a glance at Brahms, he found that
the latter was dozing in his chair. Liszt continued playing to the end of the sonata, then
rose and left the room. I was in such a position that Brahms was hidden from my view,
but I was aware that something unusual had taken place, and I think it was Reményi who
afterward told me what it was.’
Reményi corroborated Mason’s account in an interview for the ‘New York Herald’ of 18
January 1879, the first time this story found its way into print. It was later reprinted in
Kelly and Upton’s ‘Edouard Reményi (Chicago, 1906): ‘While Liszt was playing most
sublimely to his pupils, Brahms calmly slept in a fauteuil [arm-chair], or at least seemed
to do so. It was an act that produced bad blood among those present, and everyone
looked astonished and annoyed. I was thunderstruck. In going out I questioned Brahms
concerning his behaviour. His only excuse was: “Well I was overcome with fatigue. I
could not help it.” ’ In fairness to the young Brahms, it was very hot in Weimar that day
and he had been travelling all the previous night to get there.
Reményi later fell out with Brahms and left on his own. Reményi had sat beside Brahms
during Liszt’s performance and, although his comments may have been exaggerated,
certainly something happened to upset Liszt. Years later Karl Klindworth corroborated
the incident to Mason but ‘made no specific reference to the drowsiness of Brahms’. The
fact that it was very hot in Weimar on 15 June 1853 is clear from Mason’s account of his
much later conversation with Brahms on 3 May 1888, yet no commentator mentions this
circumstance.
Brahms stayed for ten days at the Altenburg accepting Liszt’s hospitality. When he left
Liszt presented him with an ornamental cigar box inscribed ‘Brams’ [sic]. It seems that
Mason and Klindworth were incorrect in their recollections that Brahms left that
afternoon or the next morning. Liszt obviously got over what upset him, if it was
Brahms’s drowsiness, but neither ever got to like each other’s music very much.
It is to be regretted that Mason does not give us any more precise details of how Liszt
played his Sonata, but we know from Mason’s account that Liszt sought empathy from
his listeners. The ‘dolcissimo con intimo sentimento’ section in the slow movement
would fit Mason’s reference to the ‘very expressive part of the sonata.’
Dionys Pruckner said that to understand the Sonata one had to have heard Liszt play it,
which is not much help to us.
The fourth occasion was on the afternoon of 23 October 18 54, when Liszt again played
his Sonata in the library of the Altenburg on his favourite Erard grand piano. His pupils,
the composer Peter Cornelius (1824-1874) and Karl Ritter, and music critic Richard Pohl,
were present and were moved by the Sonata and by Liszt’s performance. The Sonata was
preceded by Liszt’s concert study ‘Un Sospiro’ (A Sigh) with an improvised bravura
ending, and the afternoon was completed by some improvisations by one of his guests,
the Parisian organist Lefébure-Wély. This occasion was recalled by Cornelius in his
‘Literary Works’ (Leipzig, 1904-1905).