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While many found fault with Gottschalk for descending to pure "claptrap" and bravura playing, for using his great powers to merely superficial and unworthy ends, he seemed to retain as great a hold as ever over the masses of concert-goers.
"Skill in the arrangement of an artist's programs has much to do with his success. This matter has two distinct aspects. Firstly, the program must look attractive, and secondly, it must sound well in the rendition. When I say the program must look attractive, I mean that it must contain works which interest concert-goers.
Illuminated by chill gas-jets, armed with books and sandwiches, the serried and devoted ranks were composed of typical concert-goers, of types, in some cases, becoming as extinct as the muffin-man; young art-students from the suburbs, dressed in Liberty serges and velveteens, and reading ninepenny editions of Browning and Rossetti though a few, already, were reading Yeats; middle-aged spinsters from Bayswater or South Kensington, who took their weekly concert as they took their daily bath; many earnest young men, soft-hatted and long-haired, studying scores; the usual contingent of the fashionable and economical lady; and the pale-faced business man, bringing an air of duty to the pursuit of pleasure.
In this age it is possible to take refuge under the magic word "Cézanne"; we can say that Cézanne has imposed his forms on Georgian painters and public, just as Wagner imposed his on Edwardian musicians and concert-goers. This explanation seems to me inadequate; and in any case it will not account for the predominance of formal fashions in ages undominated by any masterful genius.
Well, the music of Brahms is not enjoyed by pub-loafers; but formerly the concert-goers were allowed to know better. Again: if rules were made by pedants for pedants, must not mere lawlessness be a virtue?
With his mixed blood, Hungarian and Italian, Marco Davos' performance of romantic composers was irresistible; in it there was something of Pachmann's wayward grace and Paderewski's plangency, but with an added infusion of gypsy wildness which evoked for old concert-goers memories of Liszt the brilliant rhapsodist.
The third scene opens in Elvira's apartments, and is introduced with one of the most beautiful of Verdi's arias, "Ernani, involami," with which all concert-goers have become acquainted by its frequent repetition. This is followed in turn by a trio between the two and Ernani.
The rock part of it was still there when the waltz had been accorded its third encore. Luke, more than ever like a cooped hen behind the cow-house bars, was in a position to realise the feelings of concert-goers unable to countermand the call for an encore which they neither desire or deserve.
The overture, as fresh and picturesque a piece of tone-painting as anything he ever wrote, is familiar to all concert-goers, and the opening of the first act is no less original. But perhaps the most striking part of the opera, certainly the most characteristic, is the opening of the third act, with its chain of choruses between the girls and the sailors.
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