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Vieuxtemps appears to have appealed to the cultured minority and was understood and appreciated by very few. Flowery language was used without stint, and was frequently misapplied in the most ludicrous manner, as will be seen by the following extract: "Since the death of his great master, the weird Paganini, Ole Bull had been left without a rival in Europe.
During four years he remained a pupil of De Bériot, and when that artist left Paris, in 1831, Vieuxtemps went to Brussels, where he practised hard, but without a teacher, until 1833, when he again set out on a prolonged concert tour. From this time on he seems to have spent the greater part of his time in travelling, for which he had a passion.
When I heard Vieuxtemps, I knew what to anticipate; the grandeur of the instrumental and the human possibility upon it had been revealed to me, therefore he could not surprise me, and for that revelation I am indebted to Ole Bull. Vieuxtemps prolonged the echo of the deep tone that had been sounded into my spiritual ear. I must say that the first was grandest to me, and remains so.
It will be altogether devoted to Italian music, I suppose, from the tendency of the New York taste and the collection of musicians. I heard Vieuxtemps both times he played after his return. I was very much delighted; he was so modest and composed and refined.
He now went through Finland and so on to Sweden and Norway, where he was fêted. Although closely followed by Vieuxtemps and Artot, Ole Bull was the first celebrated violinist to visit America, and in 1843 he made his first trip, landing in Boston in November of that year and proceeding directly to New York, playing for the first time on Evacuation Day.
Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance.
But at Godinne, where I usually spent my summers when in Europe, I gave a kind of traditional course in the works of Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski and other masters to some forty or fifty artist-students who would gather there the same course I look forward to giving in Cincinnati, to a master class of very advanced pupils.
Her first appearance was at the Music Hall on the 14th of February, and on this occasion she played the Fantasie Caprice by Vieuxtemps and the Andante et Rondo Russe by De Beriot. On the 21st she played again and gave the Souvenir de Mozart by Alard and the Cappicco on themes from Fille du Regiment.
In close connection with the opera, the brilliant concerts of Vieuxtemps and Thalberg go on. Probably there is nothing better of the virtuoso kind; and as they bring in the orchestra sometimes, they give occasionally something classical and great, performed in a masterly manner. Indeed, all the music of New York seems to revolve now round the Ullman-Thalberg centre.
The friendship between him and Vieuxtemps was very strong, in fact it was described as being ideal. Once, while Wieniawski was playing at a concert, Vieuxtemps was among the audience, and, at the conclusion of one of the violinist's solos, Vieuxtemps called, at the top of his voice, "Bravo, Wieniawski!"
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