Hans von Bulow A Life and Times by Alan Walker

a review by Colin Baskerville

(New York: Oxford University Press, isbn 9780-19-536868-0. 510pp.)

The conductor’s second wife, Marie von Bulow, deposited the largest Bulow archive in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. This survived the 1945 Fall of Berlin, but remains largely uncatalogued. Alan Walker, the author of a major biography of Franz Liszt, has been able to build on the research required for that study. The task was daunting partly because the 1830 Dresden-born subject led a full life.

Bulow’s conducting career included being appointed the ‘director’ of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (1887-1892). A contemporary reader would consider this a pinnacle of achievement, but at the time his conducting of the Meiningen Court Orchestra (1880-1885) attracted high praise. He appointed the twenty-one year old Richard Strauss as assistant conductor in 1885. The author is skilled in presenting detail of great interest to us. For example, the virtuoso clarinettist in the Meiningen Court Orchestra was Richard Muhlfeld for whom Brahms would write his Clarinet Quintet and the two Clarinet Sonatas. Brahms was invited to use the orchestra to rehearse his own music.

The conductor not only came into contact with the musical celebrities of the time, but inspired the younger generation of conductor/composers, such as Gustav Mahler. In fact the Klopstock poem Auferstehen [to be resurrected], sung at the conductor’s funeral, inspired Mahler for the completion of his 2nd symphony, the ‘Resurrection’.

The piano was his first musical love. The author is able to retrace von Bulow’s distinguished career as a concert pianist, as the press covered all piano items of interest. The author is particularly sound in bringing this aspect of Bulow’s musical career to life. He had important relationships with piano builders and manufacturers, such as Carl Bechstein. He played the public premiere of Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor in Berlin on January 22, 1857 on the Bechstein grand piano. The Berlin critics hated the work. The author makes a case for the 19th Century musical ascendancy of Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, Meiningen and Hamburg above Berlin, (von Bulow doesn’t seem to have liked Berlin the city at all [neither did Wagner – Ed.]). Another significant premiere was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 in Boston, USA. The pianist pioneered concert programs devoted to the works of a single composer. For example, he played the last five Beethoven sonatas in prestigious venues, such as the Musikverein in Vienna. In addition to these highly publicised piano recitals, he published editions of music scores, such as the Beethoven sonatas, with extensive annotation. Clara Schumann objected vehemently to his ‘editions’. From 1884-1887 he gave piano master classes at the Raff Conservatory in Frankfurt-am-Main, in aid of the Raff Memorial Foundation. This institution was in direct opposition to the Hoch Conservatory of Music of which Clara Schumann was a faculty member. She forbade her students to use Bulow’s edition of Bach and Beethoven; for good measure she denounced the music of Richard Wagner to the Frankfurt musical public.

During his Dresden childhood, he attended the premiere of Richard Wagner’s Rienzi (October 20, 1842) in the Dresden Royal Opera House. Wagner’s music aroused his enthusiasm, and Wagner’s conducting of Beethoven’s 9th symphony inflamed him with a life-long passion for the work. In August 1850, he attended the world premiere of Lohengrin conducted by Franz Liszt. In hindsight, a contemporary reader would consider it ironic that Wagner, who gave him his first assistant conducting job in Zurich’s opera house, would turn on him in later life. Von Bulow’s parents were very negative about their son consorting with Wagner who was politically on the nose with the Dresden authorities after the 1849 riots. In addition they opposed his choice of music as a profession. Both Wagner and Liszt wrote letters to Franziska, the pianist’s mother, extolling the musical promise of her son. Imagine receiving letters from two great 19th century musical celebrities!

Hans von Bulow’s life exposed him to the key dramas of the German states in the 19th century. For example, he experienced the Dresden uprising of 1849, from which Richard Wagner fled into exile; the Franco-Prussian War, in which a relative was killed in battle; and the rise and fall of Prince Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898). He dedicated orchestral concerts in Berlin and Hamburg to Bismarck: the Kaiser had sacked the Chancellor. Von Bulow addressed the audience after the concerts and spoke up for Bismarck. This was courageous considering the rigid authority exercised over the German people by the Kaiser. Once again von Bulow’s personal life became entwined in affairs of State; the crisis moved from the domain of the Bavarian state to the affairs of the unified Germany.

He married Cosima, one of Liszt’s daughters. One would have thought that the marriage with children would have satisfied both parties, but Cosima fell irretrievably in love with Richard Wagner. Munich scandal mongers had a field day speculating about the pregnant Cosima. King Ludwig was unable to arrest the scandal mongering. Nevertheless, the conductor prepared and conducted the premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in 1865. A DNA test in 2010 can now establish the paternity of a child, but Isolde, Cosima’s latest child, was unable to establish in a Munich court in 1910 whether her father was Richard Wagner or Hans von Bulow. Cosima, we know now, eloped with Wagner to Lucerne where she bore him a son, Siegfried. Hans von Bulow filed for divorce, but the breakdown in interpersonal relations marred his ongoing relationship with his own daughters.

Cosima effectively forbade him to set foot in Bayreuth; one daughter got married in Bayreuth a fortnight before the opening performances of Parsifal. It was a bitter pill for the conductor of both Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg to miss both his daughter’s marriage and the premiere of Parsifal. In addition, the public speculated why Felix Mottl and not he would conduct the first Bayreuth performances of Tristan und Isolde. If Cosima was resolute, Wagner was even more difficult; he wouldn’t accept any money from Cosima’s first husband. It wasn’t exactly a state secret that the Bayreuth Festival was running at a deficit. Hans von Bulow conducted fund-raising concerts throughout the land and promoted Wagner’s music.

The truth is that the conductor made many enemies in Berlin, England and the USA. His obsessive personality demanded standards of musical perfection that few could meet. The evidence proves that he was incapable of handling the media in New York and Boston on his American tours; earlier Berlin fiascos soured his career there. He had a remarkable memory for musical scores and insisted on performances without scores, but mere mortal performers found these standards too exacting. It is true, though, that he could recognise an error of judgment. He published a scathing review of Verdi’s Requiem denouncing it; in the long run his opinion could not be substantiated in the face of the popularity and critical acclaim for the score. He had to meekly write to Verdi apologising.

Physically his health was constantly failing. The author is unable to establish an accurate assessment of his medical failings against his musical accomplishments. His second wife published the Autopsy Report as a way of curbing speculation that he was mentally unsound in his later years. The author publishes this as Appendix 1 in the book.

In 1978 thirty leading conductors financed the restoration of Bulow’s memorial stone in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery, Hamburg. They published a book Hans von Bulow as Famous Conductors See Him. This latest book is a worthy tribute to remind the world’s music lovers of one of the most extraordinary figures in 19th century music.

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