1899 – Another Intermezzo with Theme & Variations

Just before setting off for Paris on the Circus’s European Tour, Halfdan received an invitation from Fritz Delius, who was planning a concert of his compositions at St James’s Hall, Piccadilly, West London.  ‘Would you like to lead the orchestra?’, he asked.  Delius, now living in France near Fontainebleau, was wanting to introduce his music to the English public, and he needed all the help he could get, not least from his old faithful eccentric Halfdan!

The programme included a Fantasy for orchestra, ‘Over the hills and far away’, a piece for solo violin & orchestra, ‘Legende’ (with Halfdan as soloist), and ‘Mitternachtslied’, a vocal setting of some words from ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ by the controversial German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Delius, now known as Frederick Delius, along with his new wife Jelka, had become obsessed with the poetry and power of Nietzsche’s writings, not least because they espoused a negative approach to religion – something they welcomed at those turbulent times.

The concert was a huge success, and Halfdan played me with great passion and commitment.

I was delighted and greatly surprised, to see that Hannah had brought to St James’s that night, many of her relatives – her parents, Frederick & Emma de la Bertauche, John & Betsy Richardson, and their son Percy & his wife Chrissie.

I was surprised because, a few days earlier, all these members of Hannah’s family had been present at St James’s Hall for a regular West London Mission Preaching Service led by the Wesleyan Hugh Price Hughes.  (You may recall that the Revd Hugh Price Hughes had lodged with my friend John Richardson when they were in Dover in 1870s).

Price Hughes was now a prominent London non-conformist church leader, and on that evening St James’s Hall was filled with sounds of a completely different kind from the nihilistic music of Friederich Nietzsche I had later played at Halfdan’s Jebe’s hands!

How amazing it is that these great contrasting sounds were preached and played and sung in the same acoustic space, and just a few days apart!  It was like the flow of a set of Variations on a familiar Theme  – faith or unbelief, tradition or innovation, certainty or uncertainty, sacred or secular, the living God or the death of God – filling the air.