SIMS REEVES AND THE GERMAN "LIED."
ITO TRH EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—In the very interesting article on the German Lied in the Spectator of February 27th there is an allusion to Sims Reeves as a singer of German songs, which perhaps you will allow me, as an old pupil and admirer of his, to notice. "C. L. G." is no doubt right in saying that " Adelaide " is the only German song Sims Reeves sang regularly, but, curiously enough, the first song I ever heard him sing was German, "Der Kuss," by Beethoven. It was in the early "sixties," and the impression the song made on my then youthful mind remains with me still. Further, in a programme of the Birmingham Festival in the "fifties" I find him singing—in one of the miscellaneous concerts—the first and last songs in Beethoven's great cycle, "An die ferne Geliebte." Rather a strange item to appear in the hotch-potch of Italian operatic selections, to which people then listened patiently for three hours and a half. Whether he ever sang the cycle as a whole I have no means of knowing ; probably not, but it is pleasant to be reminded that our greatest English singer knew and
Previous page
