In the 1850s he took up conducting and became director of the Meiningen Court
Orchestra, an ensemble which he trained so rigorously that he and every player in it
performed their concerts from memory. In 1856 he married Liszt’s daughter Cosima but
they divorced in 1869 and she married Wagner. Bülow continued as a pianist and
conductor, holding various appointments as court pianist, as well as teaching piano in
German Conservatories and in St Petersburg. Bülow’s early tours of Europe and
America marked him out as a pianist of classical leanings, his cycles of Beethoven
sonatas being particularly memorable.
Bülow premièred Liszt’s B minor piano sonata at Berlin in January 1857 and at the
concert he used the first Bechstein grand piano made by his friend Carl Bechstein. In
later years Bülow turned to the more complicated works of Liszt, such as the Sonata,
though as reported by Friedheim, ‘he attained very little success either with the public or
the critics because his objective style of playing did not lend itself to this kind of music.’
Bülow is said to have been the first pianist to play all the piano works in his repertoire
from memory. On his first visit to Great Britain in 1873 he played at a Philharmonic
Society concert and received the Society’s Gold Medal.
‘Arpeggiation in cantilena is seldom used.’ This comment was made by Bülow, after a
performance of the first movement of the Beethoven Sonata in A flat major opus 110 at
one of Bülow’s masterclasses held during 1884 to 1886. Bülow seems to have been
disapproving of melody delaying, melody anticipation and arpeggiata, or any one or more
of these, while acknowledging their occasional appropriateness. In relation to Bülow’s
possible disapproval we must bear in mind that his playing was often criticised in his day
for being exact and scholarly but lacking in spontaneity and warmth.
In April 1889 Bülow arrived in Boston and cut a wax cylinder for Edison, the recording
engineer being Edison’s colleague Theodore Wangemann. Bülow wrote that he recorded
‘Chopin’s last nocturne’, presumably opus 62 no. 2 in E major. He wrote: ‘Five minutes
later it was replayed to me – so clearly and faithfully that one cried out in astonishment.’
Wangemann played cylinders by other performers for Bülow who went into raptures and
described Edison’s invention as an ‘acoustic marvel’. He was not satisfied with his own
recording, however, claiming that the presence of the machine had made him nervous.
Wangemann had gone to Boston specifically to record Bülow’s recitals, and other pieces
were probably also recorded. Each cylinder was unique and could not at that time be
replicated and it had been Edison’s intention to buy them up. No Bülow cylinder has
ever come to light but, if it did, it would be extremely valuable evidence of nineteenth
century performing practice as showing the extent to which Bülow used the interpretative
devices.
Bülow edited works by Cramer, Beethoven and Chopin. The works by Beethoven that he
edited included the Pathétique and Appassionata Sonatas and the Thirty-two Variations in
C minor. His pupils included Agathe Backer-Grondahl, Carl H. Barth, Bernardus
Boekelmann, Giuseppe Buonamici, Pietro Florida, Wilhelm Fritze, Karl Fuchs, Hermann
Goetz, Otto Goldschmidt, Fritz Hartvigson, Alfred Hollins, Frederick Lamond, Otto
Lessman, Frank Liebich, José Vianna da Motta, Ethelbert Nevin, Rudolf Niemann, John