George Henschel (1850-1934) was one of the finest singers of his day.  Born in Breslau of Polish-Jewish parents, he studied in Berlin and became a favorite of the Joachims and Clara Schumann.  Extremely popular for his dramatic vocal style and for accompanying himself, he toured Europe and American performing duet recitals with his wife Lillian.  Henschel also built a reputation as a conductor: he served as the first music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, founded the London Symphony Concerts, and led the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow.  He succeeded Jenny Lind as Professor of Singing at the Royal College of Music, and in 1914 he was knighted.

Henschel met Johannes Brahms in May 1874 at the Lower Rhenish Musical Festival in Cologne, and their friendship endured until Brahms's death.  In the early years Brahms  hired Henschel to sing in oratorios in Vienna and accompanied him in recital.  During the summer of 1876 the two spent their vacation together on the island of Rügen, discussing musical issues as they shared a hammock stretched betwen two beech trees.  When Henschel accepted the leadership of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for three years, Brahms lamented his loss for Europe's musical life.  Throughout Henschel's stay in America, they maintained their correspondence, and during the summers after Henschel's return to England in 1884, they continued to correspond and to see one another.  Henschel was one of the torch bearers at Brahms's funeral in 1897.

Today George Henschel is best known for his highly informative little book Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms (Boston, 1907), in which he published memoirs of his times with Brahms and a selection of Brahms's letters to him.  The present volume incorporates these recollections and letters (newly edited), and supplements them with letters from Henschel to Brahms, additional Brahms memoirs from other published and unpublished sources (including Brahms's reaction to Custer's "Last Stand"), Henschel's recollections of his contacts with Verdi and Wagner, a listing of Henschel's compositions, writings, and recordings, and extensive annotations that enlighten the reader on all of this material.  An Introduction and three additional chapters further elucidate the relationship of these two musicians.  A compact disc of Henschel's complete recordings for His Master's Voice and Columbia Graphophone accompanies the book.
 

 About the Author

George Bozarth, a distinguished Brahms scholar, is professor of music history at the University of Washington and the founding executive director of the American Brahms Society.  He serves as artistic director of the Seattle early music series "Gallery Concerts" and the Sanford-Springvale Classical Music Festival in southern Maine.  In 2006 Harmonie Park Press published his book On Brahms and His Circle: Essays and Documentary Studies by Karl Geiringer.

DMM/SM 52 / 355p / 978-089990-140-9/ Paperback / 2008 / $44.00

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Reviews

“After Brahms died, Henschel wrote a vivid and much-quoted little memoir, Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms (Boston, 1907)….Prior to it several variants had already appeared in both German and English….One of Bozarth’s chief purposes in producing An Enduring Friendship, therefore, is not simply to make the Recollections readily available again, but to present a text which takes into consideration all variants found in the other versions.  He has also scoured the archives and auction catalogues to recover correspondence with Brahms not included by Henschel.  Instead of the original twenty-one, we now have forty-nine letters, including Henschel’s to Brahms.

In Bozarth’s hands, which in no way downplay Brahms’s role in the story, however, An Enduring Friendship is in fact a short and entertaining introduction to the life of George Henschel, the remarkable musician who exercised a lasting influence on the musical life of two countries.  Copious and informative endnotes comment on the letters and the Recollections—annotations which, it must be said, occasionally wander far afield.…Bozarth’s notes, indeed, present substantial information on such topics as the history of the founding of the Boston Symphony, the Leipzig Bach-Verein and Brahms’s attitude toward piano reductions of vocal scores, and Brahms’s knowledge of Scarlatti’s music. 

[T]he compact disc is a treasure.  It represents all of Henschel’s commercial recordings [made between 1913 and 1929]: eleven songs, six of them recorded twice, and a performance of Beethoven’s First Symphony with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.”

Music & Letters