Pyotr Ilyich visited the
Moscow Conservatory on the last day of his stay in Moscow, October 9 [1893]; he
heard an excerpt arranged by him and based on Mozart’s piano fantasy [No. 4] in
C minor (Fantasie et sonate) for four voices with accompaniment to a text
written by himself. Pyotr Ilyich was sitting in the hall next to me and was so
delighted that, according to him, he was about to cry; the quartet was sung
twice, and he himself offered to perform it in one of the symphonic assemblies.
Today his request is being fulfilled, and the quartet ‘Night’ will be sung by
the same performers he heard last time at the Conservatory. Right there at the
Conservatory, he told me, among other things, that the beauty of [Mozart’s]
melody was a mystery to him and that he himself could not explain the
irresistible charm of the simple tune of this quartet. Of course, it never
occurred to anyone who was at the conservatory at that time that this date
would be our farewell, and that in a little over two weeks Russia’s bright hope
in music would not be anymore, and that we would no longer see this healthy,
cheerful man who said ‘see you later’ to everyone, as he certainly wanted to be
in the symphonic assembly on October 23.
