Wednesday, March 24:
Yesterday evening Loldi sang "Like a Young Cockerel," a song by a composer from Rome which, with its trite theme, spiced with the oddest of modulations yet not made thereby to sound interesting, has a very distressing effect on us. At lunch R. sings Beethoven's "Herz, mein ..." and says no modern composer would write it this way, yet in this naive form it is so typically Beethoven.
In the evening the performance of a young pianist, Reisenauer, provides another opportunity for talking about the contemporary ways of making music. He plays the F Major Symphony, and the difference, when R. plays only the first theme, is like day and night. The talented young man can find neither the tempo nor the correct accents for the Siegfried Idyll.