The Longy Club

The Longy Club

Season One, 1900 – 1901

The First Concert

The very first concert given by this distinguished wind ensemble occurred on the evening of December 18, 1899, in Association Hall, Boston. In the program the members of the Longy Club were listed as Longy, oboe; A. Maquarre, flute; A. Selmer, clarinet; A. Hackebarth, horn; Hugo Litke, bassoon and Gebbard, piano with Brooke, flute; Sautet, oboe; Metzger, clarinet; P. Litke, bassoon and Hain, horn, listed as “assisting players.”

For this inaugural concert Longy selected the Quintet, Op. 16, for piano and winds by Beethoven, the B minor Sonate for flute by Bach and the Divertissement, Op. 36, by Emile Bernard for 10 winds. The Boston Herald was enthusiastic.

The pleasing anticipations to which the announcementof the formation of this club and its object gave rise were fully realized last evening, which were received with enthusiastic favor by the critical audience in attendance. The program was well balanced and of discreet length, and the performances were of the highest order of merit. With the exception of the pianist, the club consists of prominent leading members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which is in itself ample endorsement of their high artistic worth. For the performance in regard to both interpretation and playing, there is nothing but the heartiest praise. The occasion was delightfully interesting and the club is to be congratulated on the complete success that attended its opening effort and thanked cordially for the large share of refined pleasure it afforded.[1]

Philip Hale, the influential critic of the Journal was also pleased by this first concert and added an interesting note regarding a brief earlier series of wind chamber concerts in Boston.

In 1891 and 1892 Mr. Charles Mole, who was then first flute of the Symphony Orchestra, with some of his colleagues gave concerts for the purpose of introducing works written for wind instruments, and at one of these concerts and in Association Hall, Messrs. Mole and Nikisch played the sonata by Bach that was on the program last night.

It is a good thing that Mr. Longy has the courage to make a similar experiment. He himself is an artist of rare talent and he has shown in this city his marked ability as a conductor. His skill in the latter direction was proved last night by the excellence of the ensemble in phrasing, in attack, and in all the details that characterize fine ensemble playing.[2]

Aside from the Bach, Hale was not so enthusiastic for the literature selected for this concert. Of the Beethoven he writes,

Let us hope that in the future Mr. Longy will give the most of his attention to the moderns. We could well have been spared the quintet by Beethoven, which is familiar, and is one of the youthful works of the composer. It was first played…when the Emperor Francis and his court were in the audience. The work, therefore, has a certain historical evidence, but why should it be played in 1900, when there are modern pieces that are unknown to the public?

He also found no pleasure in the Bernard, which, in 1900, might have been considered “modern.”

Emile Bernard was born at Marseilles in 1845. He studied at the Paris Conservatory and he is organist at Notre Dame des Champs, Paris…. Bernard is not of the extreme modern French school, and he is inclined to be dry and academic as in this Divertissement, which is well written, with knowledge of the capabilities of the instruments, and with a sense of color. The work, however, is rather deficient in spontaneous melody, and the vivacity is not crisp and sparkling.

The Second Concert

The second concert of the first season was given on Jan. 9, 1901. The Herald did not review this concert, but in the Journal one can read of the sense of importance these concerts were beginning to establish for themselves.

It is to be hoped that Mr. Longy will feel sufficiently encouraged with the musical success of his undertaking to warrant the giving of another series of these most excellent concerts. Musical Boston is not so musical after all, for how much do we really hear and become thoroughly acquainted with, outside of the Symphony Orchestra music, a few soloists and a smattering of opera once a year? There was a good sized and applausive audience.[3]

The repertoire of this concert included the Quintet, Op. 55, for piano and winds by Rubinstein; the Three Romances, Op. 94, for oboe and piano by Schumann and the d’Indy Chanson et Danses. This last work in particular, one of the real masterpieces of the chamber wind repertoire, was clearly appreciated by the critic of the Journal.

D’Indy’s “Chanson et Danses” was first performed at a concert of the Society of Chamber Music for Wind Instruments in Paris, March 7, 1899. It was heard for the first time in Boston last evening. As might be suspected it is ultra-modern in melodic and harmonic structure, nor is the composer afraid of writing a full fledged tune that is sufficient in its strength to make its way through a labyrinth of harmonic ornamentation, for the these of the first dance fascinates one on its repetition, and haunts the memory. This characteristic melody is greatly enhanced by a most unique accompaniment in the bassoons, but after all it is the melody that remains with one. The chanson is not so clearly defined, but contains all the modern inventions of abrupt modulation, an almost endless variety of tone color, and shows the master hand of one whose natural voice is the orchestra.

The Third Concert

The third and final concert of the first season was given on March 13, 1901, in Chickering Hall, Boston. The program began with an Octet by Gouvy, a composer for whom the critic, Philip Hale, had little respect. Indeed, he began his review of this concert with a quotation from Tchaikovsky’s diary of a tour in 1888, during which the composer mentions meeting Gouvy at the home of Reinecke in Leipzig,

M. Gouvy was completely Teutonized, spoke German perfectly, was rather hostile toward his own country (that is, as regards music), and on the whole gave me the unpleasant impression of a man who thinks himself disillusioned and injured, and, not being appreciated by his own countrymen, is consequently disposed to exaggerate the virtues and value of foreigners. It is quite probable that M. Gouvy had some good cause for railing against musical France; but it was painful to me to hear him extol everything German at the expense of France. I had never met such a type of Frenchman before.[4]

Regarding this Octet in particular, Hale found it,

Well made for the most part, but here and there are instances of the amateur workmanship which creeps into Gouvy’s strongest works, for Gouvy abandoned the law for music, and in his youth he had no solid musical foundation. There are two movements of genuine interest: the “Swedish Dance” and the rondo finale. They are piquant and characteristic. The Introduction says little, and the Romance is labored.

Neither was Hale enthusiastic for the second work on the program, the Brahms Sonata in F, for clarinet and piano. After mentioning that the composition was first heard in Boston in 1895, Hale wrote,

It seemed to me then a dull piece and the performance of last night did not change the opinion. The second and third movements are more tolerable than the others.

We suppose that the critic, Hale, just had a bad day before coming to the concert, for he was also unimpressed by the remaining composition on this concert, one of the greatest masterpieces by Mozart, the C minor Partita for winds.

Mozart’s twelfth serenade is one of the many pieces made to order by the “glorious boy.” It is crowded with Mozartian formulas, most of them in this instance superficially pretty and meaningless. The Menuet in canon is [little?] more than a clever contrapuntal trick; there is no trace of effort and the music flows naturally in the arbitrary channels.

While the reviewer had little enthusiasm for the actual music, he nevertheless found the level of performance by the ensemble impressive, although hinting that this ensemble was not yet widely known.

The performance throughout was of a high order of excellence and the audience was appreciative. Mr. Longy prepared carefully these concerts, and it is to be hoped that he artistic results thereby achieved will arouse wider interest in this club another season. There are no such players of wind instruments in any other American city, or for that matter in Germany, and their abilities should be recognized in Boston, their adopted town.

The Herald did not review this concert as its critic attended a combined concert of the Harvard and Yale Glee Clubs. Also space in the paper was limited on this date due to the coverage of the death of former President Harrison.

1

[1] “The Longy Concert,” Boston Herald, Dec. 19, 1900.

[2] Philip Hale, “Mr. Longy’s Club,” Boston Journal, Dec. 19, 1900. It is interesting that the Bach sonata which Mr. Hale points out began the concerts by the Mole and Longy ensembles also appeared on teh first concert of Taffanel’s famous wind ensemble in Paris in 1879.

[3] “Second Concert of the New Society of Wind-Instrument Players,” The Boston Morning Journal, Jan. 10, 1901.

[4] Quoted in Philip Hale, “Chamber Concerts,” The Boston Journal, March 14, 1901.