The Gift
One day in the summer of 1979, I arrived at 1000 Park Avenue for an appointment with a Vienna born acquaintance in his 80’s. Rudolf F. Kallir, father of famous pianist Lillian Kallir, was a retired steel executive who collected autographs. He owned one of the world’s great collections of autograph music manuscripts- including originals by J.C. Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin (the F minor Ballade opus 52) Brahms, Schumann, Smetana, Bruckner (the manuscript of his First Symphony) and Hugo Wolf, among many others. In particular, he was enormously proud of a “skizzenblatt” (sketch) of one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s last musical ideas. Beethoven wrote it down on his deathbed (according to the attached 19th century annotation)
Rudolf Kallir found it at a Sotheby’s auction in 1947. The actual item up for bidding was an early 19th century autograph album of musical celebrities of that era. Hidden in the back of the book was a small envelope with the name “Beethoven” scribbled in pencil. In it was a narrow sheet of music paper with six measures of Beethoven’s musical script. On the bottom right corner was a penned- in attribution by the musician who received it from Beethoven himself. Nobody else at the auction was aware of the Beethoven item hidden inside this autograph album
The bidding at the auction house was sluggish with Kallir easily winning with a bid of 15 £ (the equivalent of $200 today). In New York, the Beethoven item was authenticated and the discovery was announced in scholarly music publications of the time. It was a decided “coup” for Kallir.
Some thirty years later, I visited Dr. Kallir. I asked him how he was. “Almost dead” was his unsmiling and typical response.
He was 84 years old and dressed, as usual, in an olive/brown jacket with matching vest, black skinny tie and white shirt. He typically had a dead pan “poker face” which belied his lively sense of humor and agile intelligence. His ears were oversized and jutted out a little bit. “I have something for you” he said matter-of-factly. We went into his enormous, old-fashioned Park Avenue apartment and he hurried over to an antique table to retrieve a small, sealed envelope which he then handed over to me. “Do not open it, please” he said. I promised that I would not. The tiny envelope was addressed to a Frau Leonore Haupt-Stummer. We both sat down on the couch in the front of the living room. Kallir told me, “Since you are going to perform at the Salzburg Mozarteum I wanted to give you this letter of introduction. Dr. Haupt-Stummer is the director of the Mozart Geburtshaus . Give it directly to her. She will know what to do.” He then went on to talk about his grand daughter violinist Pamela Frank. She was twelve years old at the time. I remember how he pronounced her name with an emphasis on the second syllable. “Pamela is an extremely talented musician. She studied violin this summer with Dorothy DeLay at Aspen.” He went on at great length about his grand daughter, and it was clear to me that he adored her. We talked about the upcoming Orpheus tour where I was to meet the group midway through the tour in Jerusalem. After that I was to play a month long State Department tour of India followed by concerts in Amsterdam, Vienna ( Musikverein ) and Salzburg ( Mozarteum ) BTW The Musikverein and the Mozarteum were both concert halls that Kallir was exceedingly familiar with throughout his eight decades. He mentioned a concert he attended that featured the two Ciesinski sisters- Kristine and Katherine. The two sang vocal duets by Schubert and Brahms and Kallir thought that they were wonderful. He asked me if I knew them and I told him that I did not.
Kristine Ciesinski
Katherine Ciesinski
As usual, I tried to steer the conversation over to German. Anxious to improve my conversational skills, I seized every opportunity to practice. Kallir never indulged me on this but he did seem to respect the efforts I was making. When we said goodbye, he wished me luck on the upcoming Orpheus tour and reminded me to give the sealed envelope to Frau Haupt-Stummer. The little sealed envelope puzzled me. Only by the end of the tour did I begin to grasp its significance.
When I arrived in Salzburg I made a special trip to the Geburtshaus on Getreidegasse 9. I handed my little envelope to the director. She seemed to have some idea who I was. Smiling, she said, “I see that you are studying German and I think this little book will help.” What she handed me then was a small green paperback edition of the correspondence between Mozart and his second cousin Bäsle - well known for its scatological content!
Then I got a personal guided tour of the museum. When we got to Mozart’s own fortepiano I begged her to unlock it. She said, “Of course you may play it” and she unlocked the transparent shield surrounding the piano.
I played the andante con moto from Mozart String Quartet in E flat major K.428. The tone of the piano was bright, clear, bell- like but resonant. It was kept perfectly in tune. I truly felt like I was in heaven! While I was playing, violinist Bill Henry sauntered in with two young women -one on each arm! Frau Haupt-Stummer walked up to me then and said, “Now I have something special to show you but you must come upstairs.” Noticing the three Americans who just walked in, she asked me, “Are those your friends?” When I nodded she said “Well, of course, they may come upstairs as well!” The two young women with Bill were the Ciesinski sisters- Kristine and Katherine. The four of us walked upstairs to a little room with a small table in the middle. We waited about fifteen minutes. Dr. Haupt-Stummer then brought in a very thick stack of maybe 50 large individual pages of manuscript paper with very neat ink writing on them. She apologized and said that these were just fragments and sketches of pieces Mozart never finished. They turned out to be a great deal more than that. There were first movements of instrumental pieces and substantial sections of music that Mozart seemed to have written out neatly, rapidly but not always legibly. It was as if the composer was in such a hurry that he didn’t have time to write down all the music he heard in his imagination. Bill and I looked at this manuscript of part of K.487 (?) and though we were
both good sight readers we both found it very difficult to solfège our way through this music without stopping often. It was difficult to decipher how the two voices played together because the bar-lines were out of alignment.
Much easier was the four part vocal music written down in soprano, alto, tenor and bass clefs. These had no words and the texture was generally a chorale texture with all voices moving in longer note values and often at the same time. With Kristine and Katherine singing soprano and alto, Bill singing tenor and me singing the bass line, we brought the manuscript to life. We were so lucky to have these two amazing professional singers filling out the quartet. The music sounded glorious and it was truly an other-worldly experience! Only recently, did I understand the importance of the tiny envelope I received in 1979 from Rudolf Kallir. This 84 year old gentleman, born in Vienna in 1895, spontaneously shared his deepest and most precious cultural memories with me out of nothing more than friendship and mutual respect. It is a gift that I will always treasure! This article is dedicated to the memory of Bill Henry- an extraordinary artist and human being.
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