Kaikhosru Sorabji to Philip Heseltine 33 (2 January 1922)
January: 2nd 1922.
Hotel Krantz.
Neuer Markt. 5.
Vienna.
My Phee:
I’m here as you see. I’ve met and played to Dr Wellecz who appeared greatly impressed and have also seen old Hertzka and his Kalmuck nephew – alias Herr Doctor Kalmuss – who is seeing to all the arrangements of my little 5 oclock concert in the small hall of the Musik Vereins Gebäude on January 13th.
I shall play the 2
Sonatas . . . it will last about an hour and a half in all and is by invitation
only: I thus hope to rope in some of the most interesting people. Dr
Wellecz has promised to act as turner over of pages. Schönberg has
not answered nor acknowledged the copy of the Sonata I sent him. Alban Berg I
have not got at yet but hope to do so through Dr. Wellecz.
The fabulous cheapness of Vienna is now at any rate entirely mythical: although one gets 22,500 crowns to the £ sterling ones expenses are just about what they would be in London. Prices are absolutely monstrous.
[Musikverein, January 2016]
Now for your commissions.
(i.) I went to the Lute makers whose name and address is
Gebrüder Placht:
Rotenturmstrasse no 14.
Wien I.
The man remembered it perfectly and said that the lute was despatched but returned apparently as unclaimed to the carriers Schenker & Co. Ankerhof. Wien: at least this is what I gathered from his almost incomprehensible German coupled with my own scanty knowledge. Gerald Cooper had better immediately communicate with these people and find out what has actually happened.
(ii.) I got your MSS. Back from the old Walrus and
(iii) deposited it along with the others with Herr Direktor Becker of Waldheim-Eberle: who will in the fullness of time send you all the estimates as I asked him. I gave him your address. But, with the violent fluctuations in the krone he estimates now in £. and he expressly tells you that his estimates are “without engagement” i.e. if the krone descends with a crash and prices treble as a result he has to charge you more. This has just happened to me over the 3 French songs: which when I paid for them some 7 months ago cost 21,000 crowns with the crown then some 2000 to the £: now I have to pay 51,000 more but it is only £2 so it doesn’t hurt much.
Everything is now arranged for all the big works are in the press: the Second Sonata is going and the 2nd Concerto . . . .There remains now only Concerto I. and the as yet incompleted Symphony the flames of which have however risen as far as page 230 of the 300 allotted span.
I don’t like Vienna: it is depressing drab and a ridiculously pretentious gimcrack city – the only tolerable part of it is of course the Innere Stadt where the shops are quite amusing. The music shops are appalling! – cabaret ditties given equal prominence with a Reger work and so on. But worst of all is this bloody Mahler orgy. I cannot turn without seeing some bleeding Sonderheft devoted to the man – a photo or a medallion – there’s a street too after him. Even the art shops have abominable etchings (I never saw more miserable displays of colour prints or etchings than in some of the swell shops on the Ring or in the Kartnerstrasse & the Kolmarkt – there is not a shop of the kind whose wares deserve to serve as bum-fodder for the backside of the man who keeps that excellent little place next door to the Bond St. Tube Station) based on the “Lied von der Erde”!
Still Mahler is better than Arthur Piss and I suppose one ought not to be astonished that the Viennese musicians have a Mahler to play with when ours have a pen[is] (I mean a Piss! pardon! . . .) But still no one has yet thought of renaming Lyons Corner House Piss House – they might of course very appropriately and proceed to enthrone 22 effigies of Arthur [Bliss] and Leigh [Henry] clasped in loving embrace. “Righteousness and Piss have kissed each other”. . . .
I went to the Opera to hear [Verdi’s] “Ballo in Maschera” murdered except for one or two singers who really knew how to sing Italian opera – but the others!! . . . . . . The orchestra it must be confessed was superb. We were in the very front row of the Parquet but never a harshness a blatancy or a raw edge could we detect. Also very lovely was an exquisite performances of a Haydn A major Mass in St. Stephens on Christmas morning wherein we froze for an hour and a half till we could stand it no longer – not the Mass but the cold!
[St Stephen's Cathedral, January 2016]
The Cafés make me quite ill: they all together make Vienna like a gigantic Café Royal. We depart immediately after my little affair for Palermo – It has poured all today and the wind is infernal. The whole place shakes.
The Hotel is very comfy indeed and admirably warmed but the service is execrable. 15 or 20 minutes to answer a Bell: half an hour waiting for a simple à la carte meal. There is a flamboyant green whore in the hotel – The waiter on being questioned by my mother as to the status & identity of this baggage informed us with gusto that she was “un dame terrible”: tout comme celles qui marchant dans le Kärtnerstrasse:- That in a month she had brought nine different messieurs in with her. Business must indeed be bad if a French strumpet in Vienna can’t catch more than 9 men in a month! And the waiter thought that quite a large number evidently.
She sits nightly in the Lounge making furious eyes at all the men who come in. That’s how she gets a meal. When the eyes have done their work, the rest of course is plain sailing. I was rather enraged to see her get hold of nice looking English boy - - - - - - no - - - not professional jealousy - - - - I was so hoping to see her get the fat lustful Jew strumpeter whom she was after like hot cakes: but it [seems that] he didn’t come off. He had his eyes on something else! . . . .
Your loving
Hicus hoctuus Sullabein
[Ambassador Hotel (successor to Hotel Krantz), January 2016]
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