Madame Szymanowska and Goethe – a burning love?

Walenty Wańkowicz (1799-1842): Portrait of the pianist Maria Szymanowska, 1828. Oil on canvas, Bibliothèque polonaise de Paris/Biblioteka Polska w Paryżu
Walenty Wańkowicz (1799-1842): Portrait of the pianist Maria Szymanowska, 1828. Oil on canvas, Bibliothèque polonaise de Paris/Biblioteka Polska w Paryżu

The public concert inspired by Goethe was able to take place on 4 November “in the chamber of the town hall before what was, by local standards, a very large audience, after Grand Duchess Maria Pawlowna, the daughter-in-law of Grand Duke Carl August, had loaned out her own instrument“.[57] The Journal für Literature, Kunst, Luxus und Mode (PDF 5) reported extensively on the concert in which vocal soloists and members of the court orchestra also performed. Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in B major, the Piano Concerto in A minor by Hummel, a piano quintet by Beethoven, vocal pieces by Ferdinando Paër, a piano nocturne by John Field and a rondo from the First Piano Concerto by Klengel: “the outstanding artist was rewarded with general, rapturous applause. She performed Hummel’s difficult concerto with a strength and softness, skill, precision and rounding which astonished everyone, and which without doubt even the master, who, removed from every ignoble consideration, has been a true friend of the artist since his sojourns in Petersburg, if he had been present would certainly have appreciated it in full fairness.”[58] The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung pronounced its judgement: “Here, as elsewhere, Mad. Szymanowska found enthusiastic admirers, who in all respects rated her playing far above the playing of many famous artists and seemingly found in it the pinnacle of what it is possible for human strength to achieve.”[59]

Chancellor von Müller reported on a subsequent dinner at Goethe’s, at which he delivered a rapturous laudation to Szymanowska: “Do we not all feel refreshed, improved, expanded in the core of our being by this gracious, noble apparition which now intends to leave us again? No, she cannot disappear, she has transitioned into our inner being, she continues to live in us with us and even if she starts, as she intends to, to escape me, I will always hold her tight within me.”[60] It is possible that the fourteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was at the concert because during this time he was a guest at Goethe’s and at the Weimarer Hof yet again as a kind of child prodigy. This comes from the music commentator and Mendelssohn biographer August Reissmann ascribing a quote to the “boy wonder” in which he cheekily commented on Goethe’s oft repeated comparison between Hummel, who briefly was Mendelssohn’s teacher, and the “piano virtuoso Szymanowska, who was staying in Weimar during that time: “Szymanowska is placed above Hummel. They have confused her pretty face with her playing.”[61]

 

 

[57] Madam Szymanowska – zu Weimar. Journal für Literatur, Kunst, Luxus und Mode, N0. 109, November 1823), page 890 (see PDF 5), online resource: https://zs.thulb.uni-jena.de/rsc/viewer/jportal_derivate_00217576/JLM_1…

[58] Ibid
[59] News. Weimar. April to the end of 1823, in: Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, No. 9, Leipzig, 26 February 1824, column 139, online resource: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10527974?page=88,89
[60] Tuesday, 4 November. Goethes Unterhaltungen (see Note 38), page 72, online resource: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb11001483?page=88,89
[61] August Reissmann: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Sein Leben und seine Werke, third edition, Leipzig 1893, page 29 f. – The quote was presumably first found in the book by the historian and son of Mendelssohn, Carl/Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Goethe und Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Leipzig 1871, page 17, online resource: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb11001481?page=26,27&q=Szymanowska – More critiques of Szymanowska’s concert in Weimar from newspapers and magazines as well as statements from contemporaries can be found in Bischler 2017 (see Literature), page 75-86

Media library
  • Fig. 1: Szymanowska, 1816

    Zofia Woyno (ca. 1810-1830): Portrait of the pianist Maria Szymanowska, miniature, 1816. Gouache over pencil on paper, 14 x 10,4 cm, Inv. No. Min.628 MNW, National Museum in Warsaw/Muzeum Narodowe w W...
  • Fig. 2: Serenade for Anton Radziwiłł, 1819

    Marie Szymanowska: Serenade for piano and accompanying cello, composed for and dedicated to His Highness, Prince Anton Radziwiłł, Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel 1819, National Library of Warsaw/Bibliot...
  • Fig. 3: Marienbad, ca. 1815

    The “Kreuzbrunnen” in Marienbad, ca. 1815. From: Franz Satori, Oesterreichs Tibur, oder Natur- und Kunstgemählde aus dem oesterreichischen Kaiserthume, Vienna 1819, frontispiece, Austrian National Lib...
  • Fig. 4: Marienbad, ca. 1820

    View of Marienbad, ca. 1820. Copperplate engraving, 8 x 13 cm. Title page to: List of spa guests arriving in Marienbad in 1823, Eger 1823
  • Fig. 5: Marienbad, ca. 1820

    Ludwig Ernst von Buquoy (1783-1834): View of Marienbad, ca. 1820. Copperplate engraving, coloured, 28.5 x 44 cm, privately owned
  • Fig. 6: Goethe, 1823

    Orest Adamowitsch Kiprensky (1782-1836): Portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Marienbad 1823. Lithograph based on a pencil drawing
  • Fig. 7: Goethe, 1823/26

    Henri Grévedon (1776-1860): Portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Paris 1826. Based on a drawing by Orest Adamowitsch Kiprensky (1782-1836) from 1823, lithograph, Inv. No. his-Port-G-0077, The Unive...
  • Fig. 8: Goethe, 1828

    Joseph Karl Stieler (1781-1858): Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1828. Oil on canvas, 78 x 63.8 cm, Inv. No. WAF 1048, Bavarian State Painting Collections – Neue Pinakothek Munich
  • Fig. 9: Brösigke’sches Haus, um 1821

    Unknown: Brösigke’sches Haus (Palais Klebelsberg) in Marienbad, ca. 1821, coloured lithograph, 44.9 x 65.1 cm, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
  • Fig. 10: Ulrike von Levetzow, ca. 1821

    Unknown: Portrait of Theodore Ulrike Sophie von Levetzow, ca. 1821. Pastel, 43.4 x 33.5 cm, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
  • Fig. 11: Szymanowska, 1825

    Aleksander Kokular: Portrait of Maria Szymanowska/Portret Marii Szymanowskiej, 1825. Oil on canvas, Inv. No. K.839, Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza, Warsaw
  • PDF 1: List of the Marienbad spa guests, 1823

    List of the spa guests arriving in Marienbad in 1823, Eger 1823, Eger 1823 (cover page missing), Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar
  • PDF 2: Kurjer Warszawski, 1822

    Nowości Warszawskie. Kurjer Warszawski, No. 77, 31 March 1822, page 1, Biblioteka Jagiellońska w Krakowie
  • PDF 3: Kurjer Warszawski, 1823

    Nowości Warszawskie, in: Kurjer Warszawski, No. 183, 3 August 1823, page 1, column 2, Biblioteka Jagiellońska w Krakowie
  • PDF 4: Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1824

    News. Leipzig, from Michael 1823 to March 1824, in: Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, No. 13, 25 March 1824, column 204, Münchner Digitalisierungs-Zentrum
  • PDF 5: Journal für Literatur, Kunst, Luxus und Mode, 1823

    Madam Szymanowska – zu Weimar. Journal für Literatur, Kunst, Luxus und Mode, Volume 38, No. 109, November 1823, pages 889-892, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
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    Nowości Warszawskie, in: Kurjer Warszawski, No. 14, 16 January 1824, page 1, column 1 f., Biblioteka Jagiellońska w Krakowie